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& 1 E LIFE 




Abmham Lincoln, 

BY HENRY J. RAYMOND, 

AND OF 

ANDRETV JOHNSON, 



By JOHN" SAVAGE, 



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ASTOR HOU3E. 






LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

BY HENRY J. RAYMOND. 



Abraham Lincoln was born on the 12th of Feb- 
ruary, 1809, in Hardin county, Kentucky. His early 
life, like that of most of the great men whom our 
country has produced, was spent in poverty and in 
toil At seven years of age he was sent to school to 
a Mr. Hazel, carrying with him an old copy of Dil- 
worth's Spelling Book, one of the three books that 
formed the family library. His father keenly felt the 
disadvantages arising from his own lack of education 
and determined, in spite of difficulties almost incon- 
ceivable, to give his son better facilities for study than 
he had himself enjoyed. His mother was a Christian 
woman, and desired earnestly that he should learn to 
read the Bible. 

Thomas Lincoln, his father, finding a life in a Slave 
State a most unsatisfactory one for himself, and pre- 
senting only the prospect of a hopeless struggle in the 
future for his children, determined upon removal, and 
when Abraham was in the eighth year of his age, the 
plan was carried into execution. The old home was 
sold, their small stock of valuables placed upon a raft, 
and the little family took its way to a new home in 
the wilds of Indiana, where free labor would have no 
competition with slave labor, and the poor white man 



6 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

migftt hope that in time Ms children could take an 
honorable position, won by industry and careful econo- 
my. The place of their destination was Spencer county, 
Indiana. For the last few miles they were obliged to 
cut their road as they went on. " With the resolution 
of veteran pioneers they toiled, sometimes being able 
to pick their way for a long distance without chopping, 
and then coming to a standstill in consequence of dense 
forests. Suffice it to say, that they were obliged to cut 
a road so much of the way that several days were em- 
ployed in going eighteen miles. It was a difficult, 
wearisome, trying journey, and Mr. Lincoln often said, 
that be never passed through a harder experience than 
he did in going from Thompson's Ferry to Spencer 
county, Indiana." 

Thus, before he was eight years old, Abraham Lin 
coin began the serious business of life. Their cabin 
was built of logs, and even the aid of such a mere 
child was of account in the wilderness where they now 
found themselves, after seven days of weary travel. 
Their neighbors, none of whom lived nearer than two 
or three miles, welcomed the strangers, and lent a hand 
towards building the rude dwelling in which the future 
President lay down, after fatiguing but healthful toil, 
to dream the dreams of childhood, undisturbed by 
thoughts of the future. 

In this log-house, consisting of a room below and a 
room above, furnished by Thomas Lincoln and his 
son's own hands, Abraham passed the next twelve 
years of his life. So long as his mother lived, she 
assisted him in learning to read, and before her death, 
which occurred when he was ten years of age, she had 



LIFE OF ABSAHAM LINCOLN. 7 

the satisfaction of seeing him read that Book which ho 
has never since neglected. 

After a while he learned to write. This was an 
accomplishment which some of the friendly neighbors 
thought unnecessary, but his father quietly persisted, 
and the boy was set clown as a prodigy when he wrote 
to an old friend of his mother's, a travelling preacher, 
and begged him to come and preach a sermon over his 
mother's grave. Three months after, Parson Elkins 
came, and friends assembled, a year after her death, to 
pay a last tribute of respect to one universally beloved 
and respected. Her son's share in securing the pres- 
ence of the clergyman was not unmentioned, and Abra- 
ham soon found himself called upon to write letters for 
his neighbors. 

His father married a second time a Mrs. Sally John- 
ston, who proved an excellent mother to her step-son, 
and who now survives to take her share of the credit 
to which she is entitled for her faithful care. In the 
course of a year or two a Mr. Crawford, one of the set- 
tlers, opened a school in his own cabin, and Abraham's 
father embraced the opportunity to send him, in order 
that he might add some knowledge of arithmetic to 
his reading and writing. With buckskin clothes, a 
raccoon skin cap, and an old arithmetic which had 
been somewhere found for him, he commenced his 
studies in the "higher branches." His progress was 
rapid, and his perseverance and faithfulness won the 
interest and esteem of his teacher. 

In that thinly settled country a book was a great 
rarity, but whenever Mr. Lincoln heard of one he en- 
deavored to procure it for Abraham's perusal. In this 



8 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

way lie became acquainted with Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
Progress, Esop's Fables, a Life of Henry Clay, and 
Weems's Life of Washington. The " hatchet" story of 
"Washington, which has done more to make boys truth- 
ful than a hundred solemn exhortations, made a strong 
impression upon Abraham, and was one of those un- 
seen, gentle influences, which helped to form his charac- 
ter for integrity and honesty. Its effect may be traced 
in the following story, which bids fair to become as 
never-failing an accompaniment to a Life of Lincoln as 
the hatchet case to that of Washington. 

Mr. Crawford had lent him a copy of Eamsay's 
Life of Washington. During a severe storm Abra- 
ham improved his leisure by reading his book. One 
night he laid it down carefully, as he thought, and the 
next morning he found it soaked through ! The wind 
had changed, the storm had beaten in through a crack 
in the logs, and the appearance of the book was ruined. 
How could he face the owner under such circumstan- 
ces ? He had. no money to offer as a return, but he 
took the book, went directly to Mr. Crawford, showed 
him the irreparable injury, and frankly and honestly 
offered to work for him until he should be satisfied. 
Mr. Crawford accepted the offer and gave Abraham the 
book for his own, in return for three days' steady la- 
bor in "pulling fodder." His manliness and straight- 
forwardness won the esteem of the Crawfords, and 
indeed of all the neighborhood. 

At nineteen years of age he made a trip to New- 
Orleans, in company with a son of the owner of a flat- 
boat, who intrusted a valuable cargo to their care. On 
the way they were attacked by seven negroes, and their 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 9 

lives and property were in great danger, but owing to 
their good use of tht! muscular force they had acquired 
as backwoodsmen, they succeeded in driving oil" the in- 
vaders, and pushing their boat out into the stream in 
safety. The result of the voyage was satisfactory 
to the owner, and Abraham Lincoln gained, in addition 
to his ten dollars a month, a reputation as a youth of 
promising business talent. 

In 1830 Thomas Lincoln decided to make another 
change, and the log cabin which had been so long their 
home was deserted for a new one near Decatur, Illinois. 
This time the journey occupied fifteen days. Abraham 
was now twenty-one, but he did not begin his inde- 
pendent life until he had aided his father in settling 
his family, breaking the ground for corn, and making 
a rail fence around the farm. These rails have passed 
into song and story. "During the sitting of the Ee- 
publican State Convention at Decatur, a banner, at- 
tached to two of these rails, and bearing an appropriate 
inscription, was brought into the assemblage, and form- 
ally presented to that body, amid a scene of unparal- 
leled enthusiasm. After that they were in demand in 
every State of the Union in which free labor is honored, 
where they were borne in processions of the people, and 
hailed by hundreds of thousands of freemen, as a sym- 
bol of triumph, and as a glorious vindication of free- 
dom and of the rights and dignity of free labor. These, 
however, were far from being the first or only rails 
made by Lincoln. He was a practised hand at the 
business. Mr. Lincoln has now a cane made from one 
of the rails split by his own hands in boyhood." 
After the first winter in Illinois, which was one of un- 



10 LIFE OP ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

common severity, and required more than his father's 
care to keep the family in food, which was mostly ob- 
tained by hunting, Abraham Lincoln began life for 
himself. Sometimes he hired himself out as a farm- 
hand, sometimes his learning procured him a situation 
as clerk in a store. When the Black Hawk war broke 
out in 1832, he joined a volunteer company, and was 
made captain. "He was an efficient, faithful officer, 
watchful of his men, and prompt in the discharge of 
duty, and his courage and patriotism shrank from no 
dangers or hardships." Thus the Commander-in-Chief 
of our armies has not been without a bit of military 
experience — much more, in fact, than the most of our 
Brigadier-Generals had had before the commencement 
of the war. 

After his military life was over he looked about for 
something to do. He ran for the Legislature, but was 
beaten, though his own precinct gave him 277 votes 
out of 284. This was the only time he was ever 
beaten before the people. He bought a store and 
stock of goods on credit, and was appointed Post- 
master. The store proved unprofitable, and he sold 
out. All this time he pursued his studies. He had 
already learned grammar, and he had now opportunities 
for mor^e extensive reading. He wrote out a synopsis 
of every book he read, and thus fixed it in his memory. 

About this time he met John Calhoun, afterwards 
President of the Lecompton Constitutional Convention. 
Calhoun proposed to Lincoln to take up surveying, 
and himself aided in his studies. He had plenty of 
employment as a surveyor, and won a good reputation 
in this new line of business. 



LIFE OF ABEAHAM LINCOLN. H 

In 1834 lie was sent to the Legislature, and the po- 
litical life commenced which his countrymen's votes 
have since shown they fully appreciated. When the 
session of the Legislature was over, he set himself to the 
study of law in good earnest. In 1836 he obtained a 
law license, and in April, 1837, he removed to Spring- 
field and commenced the practice of the law in partner- 
ship with his friend and former colleague in the Legis- 
lature, Hon. John T. Stuart. 

One incident of his law practice we cannot refrain 
from narrating. "When Lincoln first went out into the 
world to earn a living for himself, he worked for a Mr. 
Armstrong, of Petersburg, Menard Co., who, with hi3 
wife, took a great interest in him, lent him books to 
read, and, after the season for work was over, en- 
couraged him to remain with them until he should 
find something to " turn his hand to." They also 
hoped much from his influence over their son, an over- 
indulged and somewhat unruly boy. We cannot do 
better than to transcribe the remarks of the Cleveland 
Leader upon this interesting and touching incident. 

" Some few years since, the eldest son of Mr. Lincoln's old friend, 
Armstrong, the chief supporter of his widowed mother — the good old 
man having some time previously passed from earth, — was arrested on 
the charge of murder. A young man had been killed during a riotous 
melee, in the night time at a camp-meeting, and one of his associates 
stated that the death-wound was inflicted by young Armstrong. A pre- 
liminary examination was gone into, at which the accuser testified so 
positively, that there seemed no doubt of the guilt of the prisoner, and 
therefore he was held for trial. As is too often the case, the bloody 
act caused an unduo degree of excitement in the public mind. Every 
improper incident in the life of the prisoner — each act which bore the 
least semblance of rowdyism — each schoolboy quarrel, — was suddenly 
remembered and magnified, until they pictured him as a fiend of the 



12 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

most horrible hue. As these rumors spread abroad they were received 
as gospel truth, and a feverish desire for vengeance seized upon the in- 
fatuated populace, whilst only prison bars prevented a horrible death 
at the hands of a mob. The events were heralded in the county 
papers, painted in highest oolors, accompanied by rejoicing over the 
certainty of punishment being meted out to the guilty party. The 
prisoner, overwhelmed by the circumstances under which he found 
himself placed, fell into a melancholy condition bordering on despair, 
and the widowed mother, looking through her tears, saw no cause for 
hope from earthly aid. 

"At this juncture, the widow received a letter from Mr. Lincoln, vol- 
unteering his services in an effort to save the youth from the impending 
stroke. Gladly was his aid accepted, although it seemed impossible for 
even his sagacity to prevail in such a desperate case ; but the heart 
of the attorney was in his work, and he set about it with a will that 
knew no such word as fail. Feeling that the poisoned condition of the 
public mind was such as to preclude the possibility of impanolling an 
impartial jury in the court having jurisdiction, he procured a change of 
venue and a postponement of the trial. He then went studiously to 
work unravelling the history of the case, and satisfied himself that his 
client was the victim of malice, and that the statements of the accuser 
were a tissue of falsehoods. 

" When the trial was called on, the prisoner, pale and emaciated, with 
hopelessness written on every feature, and accompanied by his half- 
hoping, half-despairing mother — whose only hope was in a mother's 
belief of her son's innocence, in the justice of the God she worshipped, 
and in the noble counsel, who, without hope of fee or reward upon 
earth, had undertaken the cause — took his seat in the prisoners' box, 
and with a ' stony firmness' listened to the reading of the indictment. 
Lincoln sat quietly by, whilst the large auditory looked on him as 
though wondering what he could say in defence of one whose guilt 
they regarded as certain. The examination of the witnesses for tho 
State was begun, and a well-arranged mass of evidence, circumstantial 
and positive, was introduced, which seemed to impale the prisoner be- 
yond the possibility of extrication. The counsel for the defence pro- 
pounded but few questions, and those of a character which excited no 
uneasiness on the part of the prosecutor — merely, in most cases, requi- 
ring tho main witnesses to be definite as to the time and place. When 
the evidence of the prosecution was ended, Lincoln introduced a few 
witnossos to remove some erroneous impressions in regard to the previ- 



LIFE OF AERAHAM LINCOLN. 13 

ous character of his chent, who, though somewhat rowdyish, had 
never been known to commit a vicious act ; and to show that a greater 
degree of ill-feeling existed between the accuser and the accused, than 
the accused and the deceased. 

" The prosecutor felt that the case was a clear one, and his opening 
speech was brief and formal. Lincoln arose, while a deathly silence 
pervaded the vast audience, and in a clear and moderate tone began 
his argument. Slowly and carefully he reviewed the testimony, point- 
ing out the hithorto unobserved discrepancies in the statements of the 
principal witness. That which had seemed plain and plausible ho 
made to appear crooked as a serpent's path. The witness had stated 
that the affair took place at a certain hour in the evening, and that, 
by the aid of the brightly shining moon, he saw the prisoner inflict tho 
death-blow with a slung-shot. Mr. Lincoln showed that at the hour 
referred to the moon had not yet appeared above the horizon, and 
consequently the whole tale was a fabrication. 

" An almost instantaneous change seemed to have been wrought in the 
minds of his auditors, and the verdict of ' not guilty' was at the end 
of every tongue. But the advocate was not content with this intel- 
lectual achievement. His whole being had for months been bound up 
in this work of gratitude and mercy, and as the lava of the over- 
charged crater bursts from its imprisonment, so great thoughts and 
burning words leaped forth from the soul of the eloquent Lincoln. He 
drew a picture of the perjurer so horrid and ghastly, that the accuser 
could sit under it no longer, but reeled and staggered from the court- 
room, whilst the audience fancied they could see tho brand- upon his 
brow. Then in words of thrilling pathos Lincoln appealed to the jurors 
as fathers of some who might become fatherless, and as husbands of 
wives who might be widowed, to yield to no previous impressions, no 
ill-founded prejudice, but to do his client justice ; and as he alluded to 
the debt of gratitude which he owed the boy's sire, tears were seen to 
fall from many eyes unused to weep. 

" It was near night when he concluded, by saying that if justice was 
done — as he believed it would be — before the sun should set, it would 
shine upon his client a free man. The jury retired, and the court ad- 
journed for the day. Half an hour had not elapsed, when, as the offi- 
cers of the court and the volunteer attorney sat at the tea-table of their 
hotel, a messenger announced that the jury had returned to their seats. 
All repaired immediately to the court-house, and whilst the prisoner 
was being brought from the jail, the court-room was filled to overflow- 



14 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

ing with citizens from the town. When the prisoner and his mother 
entered, silence reigned as completely as though the house were empty. 
The foreman of the jury, in answer to the usual inquiry from the court, 
delivered the verdict of ' Not Guilty !' The widow dropped into the 
arms of her son, who lifted her up and told her to look upon him as 
before, free and innocent. Then, with the words, ' Where is Mr. Lin- 
coln V he rushed across the room and grasped the hand of his deliverer, 
whilst his heart was too full for utterance. Lincoln turned his eyes 
towards the West, where the sun still lingered in view, and then, turn- 
ing to the youth, said, 'It is not yet sundown and you are free.' I 
confess that my cheeks were not wholly unwet by tears, and I turned 
from the affecting scene. As I cast a glance behind, I saw Abraham 
Lincoln obeying the Divine injunction by comforting the widowed and 
fatherless." 

Mr. Lincoln was three times elected to the Legisla- 
ture ; and here commenced his political acquaintance 
with Stephen A. Douglas. He then remained six years 
in private life, devoting himself to the practice of the 
law, displaying remarkable ability, and gaining an 
enviable reputation. His interest in politics never sub- 
sided, and in 1844 he stumped the entire State of Illi- 
nois during the Presidential campaign. We have before 
mentioned that one of his earliest books was the " Life 
of Henry Clay," and his enthusiastic admiration for 
that Statesman, aroused in his boyhood, continued in 
full force during his life. In 1847 Mr. Lincoln took 
his seat in Congress, and was the only Whig representa- 
tive from Illinois, which had then seven members in 
that body. 

The Congress of which Mr. Lincoln was a member, 
had before it questions of great importance and interest 
to the countiy. The Mexican War was then in pro- 
gress, and Congress had to deal with grave questions 
arising out of it, besides the many which were to be 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 15 

passed upon as to the means by which it was to be carried 
on. The irrepressible Slavery Question was there, also, 
in many of its Protean forms, in questions on the right 
of petition, in questions as to the District of Columbia, 
in many questions as to the Territories. 

Mr. Lincoln was charged by his enemies in later years, 
when political enmity was hunting sharply for material 
out of which to make political capital against him, with 
lack of patriotism, in that he voted against the war. 
The charge was sharply and clearly made by Judge 
Douglas, at the first of their joint discussions in the 
Senatorial contest of 1858. In his speech at Ottawa, 
he says of Mr. Lincoln, that " while in Congress he 
distinguished himself by his opposition to the Mexican 
war, taking the side of the common enemy against his 
own country, and when he returned home he found 
that the indignation of the people followed him every- 
where." 

No better answer can be given to this charge than 
that which Mr. Lincoln himself made in his reply to 
this speech. He says : " I was an old Whig, and when- 
ever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that 
the war had been righteously begun by the President, 
I would not do it. But whenever they asked for any 
money or land- warrants or any thing to pay the soldiers 
there, during all that time I gave the same vote that 
Judge Douglas did. You can think as you please as 
to whether that was consistent. Such is the truth, and 
the Judge has a right to make all he can out of it. But 
when he, by a general charge conveys the idea that I 
withheld supplies from the soldiers who were righting 
in the Mexican war, or did any thing else to hinder the 



10 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether 
mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove 
to him." 

We should need no more thorough refutation of this 
imputation upon his patriotism than is embodied in 
this clear and distinct denial. It required no little 
sagacity, at that time, to draw a clear line of demarca- 
tion between supporting the country while engaged in 
war, and sustaining the war itself which Mr. Lincoln, 
in common with the great body of the party with which 
he was connected, regarded as utterly unjust. The 
Democratic party made vigorous use of the charge 
everywhere. The whole foundation of it, doubtless, 
was the fact which Mr. Lincoln states, that, whenever 
the Democrats tried to get him " to vote that the war 
had been righteously begun," he would not do it. He 
showed, in fact, on this point, the same clearness and 
directness, the same keen eye for the important point 
in a controversy, and the same tenacity in holding it 
fast and thwarting his opponent's utmost efforts to ob- 
scure it and cover it up, to draw attention to other 
points and raise false issues, which were the marked 
characteristics of his great controversy with Judge 
Douglas at a subsequent period of their political his- 
tory. It is always popular, because it always seems 
patriotic, to stand by the country when engaged in 
war, — and the people are not always disposed to judge 
leniently of efforts to prove their country in the wrong 
as against any foreign power. In this instance, Mr. 
Lincoln «aw that the strength of the position of the 
Administration before the people in reference to the 
beginning of the war, was in the point, which they lost 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 17 

no opportunity of reiterating, viz., that Mexico had 
shed the blood of our citizens on our own soil. This 
position he believed to be false, and he accordingly 
attacked it in a resolution requesting the President to 
give the House information on that point ; which Pres- 
ident Polk would have found as difficult to dodge as 
Douglas found it to dodge the questions which Mr. 
Lincoln proposed to him. 

On the right of petition Mr. Lincoln, of course, held 
the right side, voting repeatedly against laying on the 
table without consideration petitions in favor of the 
abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia, and 
against the slave-trade. 

On the question of abolishing Slavery in the District, 
he took rather a prominent part A Mr. Gott had in- 
troduced a resolution directing the committee for the 
District to introduce a bill abolishing the slave-trade in 
the District. To this Mr. Lincoln moved an amend- 
ment instructing them to introduce a bill for the aboli- 
tion, not of the slave-trade, but of Slavery within the 
District The bill which he proposed prevented any 
slave from ever being brought into the District, except 
in the case of officers of the Government of the United 
States, who might bring the necessary servants for 
themselves and their families while in the District on 
public business. It prevented any one then resident 
within the District, or thereafter born within it, from 
being held in Slavery without the District. It declared 
that all children of slave mothers born in the District 
after January 1, 1850, should be free, but should be 
reasonably supported and educated by the owners of 
their mothers, and that any owner of slaves in the Dis- 



18 LIFIS OB 1 ABKAIIAM JASQGLN. 

trict miglit be paid tlieir value from the Treasury, and 
the slaves should thereupon be free; and it provided 
also for the submission of the act to the people of the 
District for their acceptance or rejection. 

A bill was afterwards reported by the committee for- 
bidding the introduction of slaves into the District for 
sale or hire. This bill also Mr. Lincoln supported, but 
in vain. The time for the success of such measures, 
involving to an extent attacks upon Slavery, had not 
yet come. 

The question of the Territories came up in many 
ways. The Wilmot Proviso had made its first appear- 
ance in the previous session, in the August before, but 
it was repeatedly before this Congress also, when efforts 
were made to apply it to the territory which we pro- - 
cured from Mexico, and to Oregon. On all occasions 
when it was before the House it was supported by Mr. 
Lincoln, and he stated during his contest with Judge 
Douglas that he had voted for it, "in one way and 
another, about forty times." He thus showed himself 
in 1847 the same friend of Freedom for the Territories 
which he was afterwards during the heats of the Kan- 
sas struggle. 

Another instance in which the Slavery Question was 
before the House was in the famous Pacheco case. 
This was a bill to reimburse the heirs of Antonio 
Pacheco for the value of a slave who was hired by a 
United States officer in Florida, but ran away and. 
joined the Seminoles, and being taken in arms with 
them, was sent out of Florida with them when they 
were transported to the West. The bill was reported 
to the House by the Committee on Military Affairs. 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ] 9 

This committee was composed of nine. Five of these 
were slaveholders, and these made the majority report. 
The others, not being slaveholders, reported againsl 
bill. The ground taken by the majority was that 
slaves were regarded as property by the Constitution, 
and when taken for public service should be paid for 
as property. The principle involved in the bill, there- 
fore, was the same one which the slaveholders have 
sought in so many ways to maintain. As they sought 
afterwards to have it established by a decision of the 
Supreme Court, so now they sought to have it recog- 
nized by Congress, and Mr. Lincoln opposed it in Con- 
gress as heartily as he afterwards opposed it when it 
took the more covert, but no less dangerous shape of a 
judicial dictum. 

On other great questions which came before Congress 
Mr. Lincoln, being a Whig, took the ground which was 
held by the great body of his party. He believed in 
the right of Congress to make appropriations for the 
improvement of rivers and harbors. He was in favor 
of giving the public lands, not to speculators, but to 
actual occupants and cultivators, at as low rates as pos- 
sible ; and he was in favor of a protective tariff, and of 
abolishing the franking privilege. 

In 1848 General Taylor was nominated for the Presi- 
dency ; Mr. Lincoln was a member of the convention, 
at Philadelphia, by which he was nominated, and can- 
vassed his own State in his favor. He was also in New 
England during the campaign, attended the State Con- 
vention of Massachusetts, and made a speech at New 
Bedford, which is still remembered. Illinois, however, 
cast her vote for General Cass. In 1849 Mr. Lincoln 



20 LIFE OF ABSAHAM LINCOLN. 

was the Whig candidate in Illinois for United States 
Senator, but without success — the Democrats having 
the control of the State, which they retained until the 
conflict arising out of the Nebraska Bill, in 1854. 

During the intervening peiiod Mr. Lincoln took no 
prominent part in politics, but remained at home in 
the practice of his profession. We may be sure, how- 
ever, that he watched closely the course of public 
events. He had fought Slavery often enough to know 
what it was, and what the animus of its supporters 
was. It is not, therefore, likely that he was taken very 
much by surprise when the Nebraska Bill was intro- 
duced, and the proposition was made by Stephen A. 
Douglas to repeal that very ^Missouri Compromise 
which he had declared to be "a sacred thing, which 
no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to 
disturb." 

The Nebraska Bill was passed May 22, 1854, and its 
passage gave new and increased force to the popular 
feeling in favor of freedom which the proposition to 
repeal the Missouri Compromise had excited, and 
everywhere the friends of freedom gathered themselves 
together and rallied round her banner, to meet the con- 
flict which was plainly now closely impending, forced 
upon the people by the grasping ambition of the slave- 
holders. The political campaign of that year in Illi- 
nois was one of the severest ever known. It was inten- 
sified by the fact that a United States Senator was to 
be chosen by the Legislature then to be elected, to fill 
the place of Shields, who had voted with Douglas in 
favor of the Nebraska Bill. 

Mr. Lincoln took a prominent, part in this campaign. 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 21 

He met Judge Douglas before the people on two occa- 
sions, the only ones when the Judge would consent to 
such a meeting. The first time was at the State Fair 
at Springfield, on October 4th. This was afterwards 
considered to have been the greatest event of the whole 
canvass. Mr. Lincoln opened the discussion, and in 
his clear and eloquent yet homely way exposed the 
tergiversations of which his opponent had been guilty, 
and the fallacy of his pretexts for his present course. 

Mr. Douglas had always claimed to have voted for 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise because he sus- 
tained the " great principle'' of Popular Sovereignty, 
and desired that the inhabitants of Kansas and Ne- 
braska should govern themselves, as they were well 
able to do. The fallacy of drawing from these premi- 
ses the conclusion that they therefore should have the 
right to establish Slavery there was most clearly and 
conclusively exposed by Mr. Lincoln, so that no one 
could thereafter be misled by it, unless he was a willing 
dupe of pro-slavery sophistry. 

" My distinguished friend," said he, " says it is an 
insult to the emigrants of Kansas and Nebraska to sup- 
pose that they are not able to govern themselves. We 
must not slur over an argument of this kind because it 
happens to tickle the ear. It must be met and- an- 
swered. I admit that the emigrant to Kansas and Ne- 

o 

braska is competent to govern himself, but I d-eny 
his right to govern any other person without that per- 
son's consent." 

The two opponents met again at Peoria. "We believe 
it is universally admitted that on both of these occa- 
sions Mr Lincoln had decidedly the advantage. The 



22 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

result of the election was the defeat of the Democrats 
and the election of anti-Nebraska men to the Legis- 
lature to secure the election of a United States Senator 
who would be true to freedom, if they could be brought 
to unite upon a candidate. Mr. Lincoln was naturally 
the candidate of those who were of Whig antecedents. 
Judge Trumbull was as naturally the candidate of 
some who had really come out from the Democratic 
party — though they still called themselves Free Demo- 
crats. 

There was danger, of course, in such a posture of 
affairs, and Mr. Lincoln, in that spirit of patriotism 
which he has always shown, by his own personal exer- 
tions secured the votes of his friends for Judge Trum- 
bull, who was accordingly chosen Senator. The charge 
was afterwards made by the enemies of both that there 
had been in this matter a breach of faith on the part of 
Judge Trumbull, and that Mr. Lincoln had the right to 
feel and did feel aggrieved at the result. Mr. Lincoln 
himself, however, expressly denied in his speech at 
Charleston, Sept. 18, 1858, that there had been any 
such breach of faith. 

The pressure of the Slavery contest at last fully 
organized the Eepublican party, which held its first 
Convention for the nomination of President and Vice- 
President at Philadelphia on June 17, 1856. John C. 
Fremont was nominated for President and William L. 
Dayton for Vice President. Mr. Lincoln's name was 
prominent before the Convention for the latter office, 
and on the informal ballot he stood next to Mr. Dayton, 
receiving 110 votes. Mr. Lincoln's name headed the 
Eepublican Electoral ticket in Illinois, and he took an 



LIFE OF ABE AH AM LINCOLN. 23 

active part in the canvass, but the Democrats carried 
the State, though only by a plurality vote. 

We now come to the great Senatorial contest of 1858, 
which established Mr. Lincoln's reputation before the 
people of the whole conntry, not only as a very able 
debater and an eloquent orator, but also as a wise poli- 
tician, wise enough to hold firm to sound principles, 
and to yield nothing of them, even against the judg- 
ment of earnest friends. 

On the 4th of March, 1857, Mr. Buchanan had taken 
his seat in the Presidential chair. The struggle be- 
tween Freedom and Slavery for the possession of Kan- 
sas was at its height. A few days after his inaugura- 
tion, the Supreme Court rendered the Dred Scott 
decision, which was thought by the friends of Slavery 
to insure their victory by its holding the Missouri Com- 
promise to be unconstitutional, because the Constitution 
itself carried Slavery over all the Territories of the 
United States. In spite of this decision, the friends of 
Freedom in Kansas maintained their ground. The 
slaveholders, however, pushed forward their schemes, 
and in November, 1857, their Constitutional Conven- 
tion, held at Lecompton, adopted the Lecompton Con- 
stitution. The trick by which they submitted to the 
popular vote only a schedule on the Slavery question, 
instead of the whole Constitution, compelling every 
voter, however he might vote upon this schedule, to 
vote for their Constitution, which fixed Slavery upon 
the State just as surely whether the schedule was 
adopted or not, will be well remembered, as well as the 
feeling which so unjust a device excited through- 
out the North. Judge Douglas had sustained the Dred 



24 LIFE OF ABB AH AM LINCOLN". 

Scott decision, but he could not sustain this attempt to 
force upon the people of Kansas a Constitution against 
their will. He took ground openly and boldly against 
it — denouncing it in the Senate and elsewhere as an 
outrage upon the people of Kansas, and a violation of 
every just Democratic principle. He declared that he 
did not care whether the people voted the Slavery clause 
" up or down," but he thought they ought to have the 
chance to vote for or against the Constitution itself. 

The Administration had made the measure their own, 
and this opposition of Douglas at once excited against him 
the active hostility of the slaveholders and their friends, 
with whom he had hitherto acted in concert. The bill 
was finally passed through Congress on April 30th, 
1858, under what is known as the English bill, whereby 
the Constitution was to be submitted to the votes of 
the people of Kansas, with the oner of heavy bribes to 
them in the way of donations of land, etc., if they 
would accept it : and the people, in spite of the bribes, 
voted it down, by an immense majority. 

Judge Douglas's term was on the eve of expiring, 
and he came home to Illinois after the adjournment of 
Congress to attend in person to the political campaign, 
upon the result of which was to depend his re-election 
to the Senate. 

His course on the Lecompton bill had made an open 
breach between him and the Administration, and he 
had rendered such good service to the Eepublicans in 
their battle with that monstrous infamy, that there were 
not wanting many among them who were inclined to 
think it would be wise not to oppose his re-election. 

But the Eepublicans of Illinois thought otherwise. 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 25 

They knew that he was not in any sense a Repub- 
lican. They knew that on the cardinal principle 
of the Republican party, opposition to the spread 
of Slavery into the Territories, he was not with 
them ; for he had declared in the most positive way 
that he " did not care whether Slavery was voted down 
or up." And they therefore determined, in opposition 
to the views of some influential Republicans at home 
as well as in other States, to fight the battle through 
against him, with all the energy that they could bring 
to the work. And to this end, on the 17th of June, 
1858, at their State Convention at Springfield, they 
nominated Mr. Lincoln as their candidate for the 
Senate of the United States. 

The speech of Mr. Lincoln to the Convention which 
had nominated him, was the beginning of the campaign. 
Its opening sentences contained those celebrated words, 
which have been often quoted both by friends and ene- 
mies : "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I 
believe this Government cannot endure permanently 
half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to 
be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall, but I 
do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become 
all one thing or all the other." Little idea could he 
have had then how near the time was when the country 
should be united upon this point. Still less could he 
have dreamed through what convulsions it was to pass 
before it reached that position — into what an abyss 
of madness and crime the advocates of Slavery would 
plunge in their efforts to " push it forward till it should 
become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as 
new — North as well as South." But there seemed 



2,6 LIFE OF ABE AH AM LINCOLN. 

to him to be manifest indications of their design thus 
to push it forward, and he devoted his speech to show- 
ing forth the machinery which they had now almost 
completed, for the attainment of their purpose ; it only 
needing that the Supreme Court should say that the 
Constitution carried Slavery over the States, as they 
had already in the Dred Scott decision declared that 
it was carried over the Territories. And he closed his 
speech with a sharp attack upon Douglas, as being a 
party to this plan to legalize Slavery over the Conti- 
nent. It was plain from the first that the struggle 
would take the shape of a personal contest between the 
two men. Each recognized the other as the embodi- 
ment of principles to which he was in deadly hostility. 
Judge Douglas was the champion of all sympathizers 
with Slavery at the North, of those who openly advo- 
cated it, and still more of those who took the more 
plausible and dangerous part of not caring whether it 
" was voted down or up." Mr. Lincoln's soul was on 
fire with love for freedom and for humanity, and with 
reverence for the Fathers of the Country, and for the 
principles of freedom for all under the light of which 
they marched. He felt that the contest was no mere 
local one, that it was not of any great consequence what 
man succeeded in the fight, but that it w T as all-impor- 
tant that the banner of Freedom should be borne with 
no faltering step, but " fall high advanced." And thus 
through the whole campaign he sought with all his 
power to press home to the hearts of the people the 
principles, the example and the teachings of the men 
of the Eevolution. 

The two combatants first met at Chicago, in July. 



LIFE OF ABILAIIAM LINCOLN. 27 

There was no arrangement tlien about their speaking 
against each other, but Judge Douglas havi ng addressed 
a meeting on the 9th July, it was inevitable that Mr. 
Lincoln should answer him on the 10th. One week later 
both spoke in Springfield on the same day, but before 
different audiences; and one week later Mr. Lincoln 
addressed a letter to Douglas, challenging him to a series 
of debates during the campaign. 

The challenge was accepted, and arrangements were 
at once made for the meetings. Whether it was done 
intentionally or not, or so happened, the terms pro- 
posed by Mr. Douglas were such as to give him the 
decided advantage of having four opening and closing 
speeches to Mr. Lincoln's three; but Mr. Lincoln, 
while noticing the inequality, did not hesitate to accept 
them. 

The seven joint debates were held as follows : — at 
Ottawa on August 21st; at Freeport on August 27th ; 
at Jonesboro on September 15th ; at Charleston on Sep- 
tember 18th ; at Galesburg on October 7th ; at Quincy 
on October loth ; at Alton on October 15th. These 
seven tournaments raised the greatest excitement 
throughout the State. They were held in all quarters 
of the State, from Freeport in the north to Jonesboro 
in the extreme south. Everywhere the different par- 
ties turned out to do honor to their champions. Pro- 
cessions and cavalcades, bands of music and cannon- 
firing, made every day a day of excitement. But far- 
greater was the excitement of such oratorical contests 
between two such skilled debaters, before mixed audi- 
ences of friends and foes, to rejoice over every keen 
thrust at the adversary ; to be cast down by each fail- 



28 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

r 

ure to parry the thrust so aimed. We cannot pretend 
to give more than the barest sketch of these great efforts 
of Mr. Lincoln's. They are and always will be, to those 
who are interested in the history of the Slavery contest, 
most valuable and important documents. 

In the first speech at Ottawa, besides defending him- 
self from some points which Douglas had made against 
him, and among others, explaining and enlarging upon 
that passage from his Springfield speech, of " A house 
divided against itself," he took up the charge which he 
had also made in that speech of the conspiracy to ex- 
tend Slavery over the northern States, and pressed it 
home, citing as proof of its existence a speech which 
Douglas himself had made on the Lecompton bill, in 
which he had substantially made the same charge upon 
Buchanan and others. He then showed again that all 
that was necessary for the accomplishment of the scheme 
was a decision of the Supreme Court that no State 
could exclude Slavery, as the Court had already decided 
that no Territory could exclude it, and the acquiescence 
of the people in such a decision, and he told the people 
that Douglas was doing all in his power to bring about 
such acquiescence in advance, by declaring that the 
true position was not to care whether Slavery " was 
voted down or up," and by announcing himself in 
favor of the Dred Scott decision, not because it was 
right, but because a decision of the Court is to him 
a " Thus saith the Lord," and thus committing himself 
to the next decision just as firmly as to this. He closed 
his speech with the following eloquent words : " Henry 
Clay, my beau ideal of a Statesman — the man for whom 
I fought all my humble life — once said of a class of 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN". 29 

men who would repress all tendencies to liberty and 
ultimate emancipation, that they must, if they would 
do this, go back to the era of our Independence and 
muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous 
return ; they must blow out the moral lights around 
us ; they must penetrate the human soul and eradicate 
there the love of liberty; and then, and not till then, 
could they perpetuate Slavery in this country. To my 
thinking, Judge Douglas is, by his example and vast 
influence, doing that very thing in this community, 
when he says that the negro has nothing in the Declara- 
tion of Independence. Henry Clay plainly understood 
the contrary. Judge Douglas is going back to the era 
of our Revolution, and to the extent of his ability 
muzzling the cannon which thunders its annual joyous 
return. When he invites any people, willing to have 
Slavery, to establish it, he is blowing out the moral 
lights around us. When he says he ' cares not whether 
Slavery is voted down or up' — that it is a sacred right 
of self-government, he is, in my judgment, penetrating 
the human soul and eradicating the light of reason and 
the love of liberty in this American people. And 
when, by all these means and appliances, he shall suc- 
ceed in bringing public sentiment to an exact accord- 
ance with his own views — when these vast assemblages 
shall echo back all these sentiments, when they shall 
come to repent his views and to avow his principles, 
and to say all that he says on these mighty questions — 
then it needs only the formality of the second Dred 
Scott decision, which he indorses in advance, to make 
Slavery alike lawful in all the States — old as well as 
new, North as well as South." 



30 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

In the second debate at Freeport, Mr. Lincoln gave 
categorical answers to seven questions which Douglas 
had proposed to him, and in his turn put four questions 
to Douglas, to which he got but evasive replies. He 
also pressed home upon his opponent a charge of 
quoting resolutions as being adopted at a Republican 
State Convention, which were never so adopted, and again 
called Douglas's attention to the conspiracy to national- 
ize Slavery, and he showed that his pretended desire to 
leave the people of a Territory free to establish Slavery 
or exclude it, was really only a desire to allow them to 
establish it, as was shown by his voting against Mr. 
Chase's amendment to the Nebraska Bill, which gave 
them leave to exclude it. In the third debate at Jones- 
boro, Mr. Lincoln showed that Douglas and his friends 
were trying to change the position of the country on 
the Slavery question from what it was when the Consti- 
tution was adopted, and that the disturbance of the 
country had arisen from this pernicious effort. He 
then cited from Democratic speeches and platforms of 
former days to show that they occupied then the very 
opposite ground on the question from that which was 
taken now, and showed up the evasive character of 
Douglas's answers to the questions which lie had pro- 
posed, especially the subterfuge of " unfriendly legis- 
lation" which he had set forth as the means by which 
the people of a Territory could exclude Slavery from 
its limits in spite of the Dred Scott decision. 

When Mr. Lincoln was preparing these questions for 
Douglas, he was urged by some of his friends not to 
corner him on that point, because he would surely 
stand by his doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty in defi- 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ,T ] 

ancc of the Dred Scott decision, " and that," said they, 
"will make him Senator." "That may be/' said Mr. 
Lincoln, with a twinkle in his eye, " but if he takes 
that shoot he never can be President/' 

Mr. Lincoln's sagacity did not fail him here. This 
position which Douglas took of " unfriendly legis- 
lation," was a stumbling-block which he was never 
able to get over; and if the contest between them had 
brought out no other good result, the compelling 
Douglas to take this ground was an immense success. 

The fourth speech, at Charleston, was devoted by 
Mr. Lincoln to enlarging upon the evidence of a charge 
previously made by Judge Trumbull upon Douglas of 
being himself responsible for a clause in the Kansas 
bill which would have deprived the people of Kansas 
of the right to vote upon their own Constitution — 
a charge which Douglas could never try to answer 
without losing his temper. 

In the fifth debate, Mr. Lincoln answered the charge 
that the Republican party was sectional ; and after again 
exploding the fraudulent resolutions and giving strong 
proof that Douglas himself was a party to the fraud, 
and again showing that Douglas had failed to answer 
his question about the acceptance of the new Dred 
Scott decision, which, he said, was "just as sure to be 
made as to-morrow is to come, if the Democratic party 
shall be sustained"' in the elections, he discussed the 
acquisition of further territory and the importance o/ 
deciding upon any such acquisition, by the effect which 
it would have upon the Slavery question among our- 
selves. 

In the next debate, at Quiney, besides making some 



S2 LIFE OF ABKAIIA3I LINCOLN. 

personal points as to the mode in which Douglas had 
conducted the previous discussions, he stated clearly 
and briefly what were the principles of the Republican 
party, what they proposed to do, and what they did not 
propose to do. He said that they looked upon Slavery 
as " a moral, a social, and a political wrong," and they 
" proposed a course of conduct which should treat it as 
a wrong ;" did not propose to "disturb it in the States,'^ 
but did propose to "restrict it to its present limits;" 
did not propose to decide that Dred Scott was free, but 
did not believe that the decision in that case was a po- 
litical rule binding the voters, the Congress, or the Presi- 
dent, and proposed "so resisting it as to have it re- 
versed if possible, and a new judicial rule established 
on the subject." 

Mr. Lincoln s last speech, at Alton, was a very full 
and conclusive argument of the whole Slavery Ques- 
tion. He showed that the present Democratic doctrines 
were not those held at the time of the Revolution in 
reference to Slavery ; showed how the agitation of the 
country had come from the attempt to set Slavery upon 
a different footing, and showed the dangers to the 
country of this attempt. He brought the whole contro- 
versy down to the vital question whether Slavery is 
wrong or not, and demonstrated that the present Demo- 
cratic^ sentiment was that it was not wrong, and that 
Douglas and those who sympathized with him did not 
desire or expect ever to see the country freed from this 
gigantic evil. # 

It must not be supposed that these seven debates 
were all of Mr. Lincoln's appearances before the people 
during the campaign. He made some fifty other 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. S3 

speeches all over the State, and everywhere his strong 

arguments, his forcible language, and his homely way 
of presenting the great issues, so as to bring them home 
to the hearts of the people, had a powerful effect. The 
whole State fairly boiled with the excitement of the 
contest. Nor this alone, for all over the country the 
eyes of the people were turned to Illinois as the great 
battle-ground, and the earnest wishes of almost all who 
loved freedom followed Mr. Lincoln throughout all the 
heated struggle. He had, however, other opposition 
besides that of his political opponents. The action of 
Judge Douglas on the Lecompton Constitution, and the 
bitter hostility of the southern wing of the Democratic 
party towards him, had led very many Republicans, 
and some of high consideration and influence in other 
States, to favor his return to the Senate. They deemed 
this due to the zeal and efficiency with which he had 
resisted the attempt to force slavery into Kansas against 
the will of the people, and as important in encouraging 
other Democratic leaders to imitate the example of 
Douglas in throwing off the yoke of the shareholding 
aristocracy. This feeling proved to be of a good deal 
of weight against Mr. Lincoln in the canvas. 

Then, again, the State had been so unfairly districted, 
that the odds were very heavily against the Republi- 
cans, and thus it came about that although on the 
popular vote Douglas was beaten by more than five 
thousand votes, he was enabled to carry off the sub- 
stantial prize of victory by his majority in the Legisla- 
ture. We say the " substantial prize of victory," and 
so it was thought to be at the time. But later events 
showed that the battle which was then fought was after 
all but the precursor of the Presidential contest, and 



34 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

that it insured to Mr. Lincoln the victory in that more 
important struggle. 

Between the close of this Senatorial contest and the 
opening of the Presidential campaign, Mr. Lincoln 
made several visits to other States. In the following 
vear he took an active part in the political campaign in 
Ohio, still following up his old opponent, who had but 
recently contributed to Harper's Magazine his famous 
article on Slavery and the Constitution. lie also 
visited Kansas, and was received with unbounded en- 
thusiasm by the people of that State, whose battle he had 
fought so well ; and in February, i860, he visited New 
York, and there made a speech on National Politics 
before the Young Men's Republican Club at Cooper 
Institute, the effect of which was to make him better 
known and still more highly esteemed in New York, 
where his contest with Douglas had already made him 
many friends. Indeed, we think we hardly state it too 
strongly when we say, that their joint effect was to 
make Mr. Lincoln decidedly the second choice of the 
great body of the Republicans of New York, as the 
candidate of the Republican party for the campaign 
of 1860. 

It was, doubtless, during this visit of Mr. Lincoln to 
New York that the following incident occurred, which 
is thus narrated by a teacher at the Five Points House 
of Industry: "Our Sunday School in the Five Points 
was assembled, one Sabbath morning, when I noticed 
a tall, remarkable looking man enter the room and 
take a seat among us. He listened with fixed attention 
to our exercises, and his countenance expressed such 
genuine interest that I approached him and suggested 



LIFE OF A1ULAIIAXI LINCOLN, 



that he might be willing to say something to the chil- 
dren. He accepted the invitation with evi lent pleasure ; 
an 1 coming forward began a simple address, which at 
once fascinated every little hearer and hushed the room 
into silence. His language was strikingly beautiful, 
and his tones musical with intensest feeling. The little 
faces around him would droop into sad conviction as 
he uttered sentences of warning, and would brighten 
into sunshine as he spoke cheerful words of promise. 
Once or twice he attempted to close his remarks, but 
the imperative shout of 'Go on!' 'Oh, do go on!' 
would compel him to resume. As I looked upon the 
gaunt and sinewy frame of the stranger, and marked 
his powerful head and determined features, now touched 
into softness by the impressions of the moment, I felt 
an irrepressible curiosity to learn something more about 
him, and when he was quietly leaving the room I 
begged to know his name. He courteously replied, 
' It is Abraham Lincoln, from Illinois.' ' 

The Republican National Convention of 1SG0, met 
on the 10th of May, at Chicago, in an immense building 
which the people of Chicago had put up for the pur- 
pose, called the Wigwam. There were -LQ5 Delegates. 
The city was rilled with earnest men, who had come 
there to press the claims of their favorite candidates, 
and the halls and corridors of ail the hotels swarmed, 
and buzzed with an eager crowd, in and out of which 
darted or pushed or wormed their way the various 
leaders of party politics. Mr. Chase, Mr. Bates, and 
Mr. Cameron were spoken of and pressed somewhat as 
candidates, but from the first it was evident that the 
contest lay between Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln. 



36 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Judge TVilmot, of Pennsylvania, was chosen tempo- 
rary Chairman of the Convention, and in the afternoon 
of the first day a permanent organization was effected 
by the choice of George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, as 
President, with 27 Vice-Presidents and 25 Secretaries. 
On Thursday, the 17th, the Committee on Resolutions 
reported the platform, which was enthusiastically 
adopted. A motion was made to proceed to the nomi- 
nation at once, and if that had been done the result of 
the Convention might have proved very different, as at 
that time it was thought that Mr. Seward's chances 
were the best. Bat an adjournment was taken till the 
morning, and during the night the combinations were 
made which resulted in the nomination of Mr. Lincoln. 
The excitement of the Convention and of the audience 
on the morning of Friday was intense. The Illinoisans 
had turned out in great numbers, zealous for Lincoln, 
and though the other States, near and far, had sent 
many men who were equally zealous for Mr. Seward, 
it was quite clear that Mr. Lincoln's supporters were in 
the majority in the audience. The first ballot gave 
"Mr. Seward 173 J votes to 102 for Mr. Lincoln, the rest 
being scattered. On the second ballot the first indica- 
tion of the result was felt, when the Chairman of the 
Vermont Delegation, which had been divided on the pre- 
vious ballot, announced when the name of Vermont was 
called, that " Vermont casts her ten votes for the young 
giant of the West, x\braham Lincoln." On the second 
ballot, Mr. Seward had 1S4£ to 181 for Mr. Lincoln, and 
on the third ballot Mr. Lincoln received 230 votes, being 
within 1J of a majority. The vote was not announced, 
but so many everywhere had kept the count that it was 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 37 

known throughout the Convention at once. Mr. Car- 
ter, of Ohio, rose and announced a change in the vote of 
the Ohio Delegation of four votes in favor of Mr. Lin- 
coln, and the Convention at once boiled over into a 
state of the wildest excitement. The cheers of the 
audience within were answered by those of a yet larger 
crowd without, to whom the result was announced. 
Cannon roared, and bands played, and banners waved, 
and the excited Republicans of Chicago cheered them- 
selves hoarse, while on the wings of electricity sped in 
every direction the news of Mr. Lincoln's nomination, 
to be greeted everywhere with similar demonstrations. 
It was lon^ before the Convention could calm itself 
enough to proceed to business. When it did, other 
States changed thoir votes in favor of the successful 
nominee until it was announced, as the result of the 
third ballot, that Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, had re- 
ceived 354 votes and was nominated by the Republican 
party for the office of President of the United States. 
The nomination was then,, on the motion of Mr. Evarts, 
of New York, made unanimous, and the Convention 
adjourned till the afternoon, when they completed their 
work by nominating Hannibal Hamlin for Vice-Presi- 
dent. 

Mr. Lincoln was at Springfield at the time. He had 
been in the telegraph offi.ee during the casting of the 
first and second ballots, but then left, and went over to 
the office of the State Journal, where he was sitting 
conversing with friends while the third ballot was 
bein^ taken. In a few moments came across the wires 
the announcement of the result. The Superintendent 
of the Telegraph Company, who was present, wrote on 



38 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

a scrap of paper, " Mr. Lincoln : You are nominated 
on the third ballot," and a boy ran with the message to 
Mr. Lincoln. He looked at it in silence amid the 
shouts of those around him, then rising .and putting it 
in his pocket he said quietly, "There's a little woman 
down at our house would like to hear this — I'll go 
down and tell her." 

Next day there arrived at Springfield the committee 
appointed by the Convention to inform Mr. Lincoln 
officially of his nomination ; Mr. Ashmun, President 
of the Convention, addressing Mr. Lincoln, said : 

" I have, sir, the honor, in behalf of the gentlemen 
who are present — a Committee appointed by the Re- 
publican Convention recently assembled at Chicago — 
to discharge a most pleasant duty. We have come, sir, 
under a vote of instructions to that Committee, to noti- 
fy you that you have been selected by the Convention 
of the Republicans at Chicago for President of the 
United States. They instruct us, sir, to notify you of 
that selection, and that Committee deem it not only 
lespectful to yourself, but appropriate to the important 
matter which they have in hand, that they should come 
in person, and present to you the authentic evidence of 
the action of that Convention; and, sir, without any 
phrase which shall either be considered personally 
plauditory to yourself, or which shall have any refer- 
ence to the principles involved in the questions which 
are connected with your nomination, I desire to present 
to you the letter which has been prepared, and which 
informs you of your nomination, and with it the plat- 
form resolutions and sentiments which the Convention 
adopted. Sir, at your convenience we shall be glad to 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLX. 39 

receive from you such a response as it may be your 

pleasure to give us." 

Mr. Lincoln listened to this address with a degree of 
grave dignity that almost wore the appearance of sad- 
ness, and after a brief pause, in which he seemed to be 
pondering the momentous responsibilities of his posi- 
tion, he thus replied : 

"■Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee — 
I tender to you, and through you to the Republican 
ISTational Convention, and all the people represented in 
it, my profoundest thanks for the high honor done me, 
which you now formally announce. Deeply, and even 
painfully sensible of the great responsibility which, is 
inseparable from this high honor — a responsibility 
which I could almost wish had fallen upon some one 
of the far more eminent men and experienced states- 
men whose distinguished names were before the Con- 
vention, I shall, by your leave, consider more fully the 
resolutions of the Convention, denominated the plat- 
form, and without any unnecessary or unreasonable de- 
lay, respond to you, Mr. Chairman, in writing, not 
doubting that the platform will be found satisfactory, 
and the nomination gratefully accepted. 

"And now I will not longer defer the pleasure of 
taking you, and each of you, by the hand " 

Tall Judge Kelly, of Pennsylvania, who was one of 
the Committee, and who is himself a great many feet 
high, had meanwhile been eyeing Mr. Lincoln's lofty 
form with a mixture of admiration and very likely 
jealousy ; this had not escaped Mr. Lincoln, and as he 
shook hands with the judge he inquired, "What is 
your height?'' 



40 LIFE OF ABU A HAM LINCOLN. 

"Six feet three; what is yours, Mr. Lincoln?" 

"Six feet four." 

"Then," said the judge, "Pennsylvania bows to Illi- 
nois. My dear man, for years my heart has been ach- 
ing for a President that I could look vp to, and I've 
found him at last in the land where we thought there 
were none but little giants." 

Mr. Lincoln's formal reply to the official announce- 
ment of his nomination, was as follows : 

Springfield, Illinois, May 23, 1850. 
Sir — I accept the nomination tendered me by the 
Convention over which you presided, of which I am 
formally apprised in a letter of yourself and others act- 
ing as a Committee of the Convention for that purpose. 
The declaration of principles and sentiments which ac- 
companies your letter meets my approval, and it shall 
be my care not to violate it, or disregard it in any part. 
Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and with 
due regard to the views and feelings of all who were 
represented in the Convention, to the rights of all the 
states and territories and people of the nation, to the 
inviolability of the Constitution, and the perpetual 
union, harmony, and prosperity of all, I am most happy 
to co-operate for the practical success of the principles 
declared by the Convention. 

Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen, 

Abraham Lincoln - . 
Hon. George Asiimun, 

President of the Republican Convention. 

Mr. Lincoln's nomination proved universallv accept- 
able to the Eepublican party. They recognized in him 
a man of firm principles, of ardent love for freedom, 



LIFE OF ABlAiHAM LINCOLN. 41 

of strict integrity and truth, and they went into the 
political contest with a zeal and enthusiasm which was 
the guarantee of victory ; while the doubt and uncer- 
tainty, the divided counsels, and wavering purposes of 
their opponents were the sure precursors of defeat. 

His nomination was the signal to the leaders of the 
slaveholders' party for pressing upon the Democratic 
Convention their most ultra views, that by the division 
of the Democratic forces the victory of Mr. Lincoln 
might be assured, and the pretext afforded them for 
carrying into execution the plot against the liberties of 
the country which they had been for so many years 
maturing. That they would dare to carry their threat 
of rebellion into execution, was not believed at the 
North. If it had been, while it would probably have 
scared away some votes from Mr. Lincoln, it would 
have brought to him more votes yet from those who, 
though following the Democratic banner, had not 
learned to disregard the good old doctrine that the ma- 
jority must rule, and would have rushed to its rescue, 
if they had believed that it was really threatened. The 
vote which he received was that of a solid phalanx of 
earnest men, who had resolved that Freedom should be 
henceforth national, and Slavery should be and remain 
as it was meant to be when the Constitution was 
adopted. They formed a body of nearly 2,000,000 
voters, who carried for Mr. Lincoln the electoral votes 
of the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, 
Wisconsin, Minnesota, California. 

That the consequences of that election have been 



42 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

very different from what was anticipated by the great 
body of the people is unquestionably true. Few men 
of any party then understood the secret influences that 
were conspiring against the peace and integrity of the 
Union, and fewer still were willing to believe any con- 
siderable portion of the people capable of so gigantic a 
crime as the attempted overthrow of the great Eepublic 
of the world, either to revenge a party defeat or to per- 
petuate the slavery of the negro race. No man can 
justly be held responsible even for the consequences of 
his own action, any farther than, in the exercise of a 
just and fair judgment, he can foresee them. In elect- 
ing Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, the American peo- 
ple intended to erect a permanent bulwark against the 
territorial extension of slavery, and the perpetuation of 
its political power. If they had foreseen the madness 
of its defenders, they might have shrunk from the 
dreadful ordeal through which that madness has com- 
pelled the nation to pass, but in this, as in all the af- 
fairs of human life, ignorance of the future often proves 
the basis and guarantee of its wise development : and 
we believe that even now, with their experience, through 
three of the stormiest and most terrible years this na- 
tion has ever seen, of the sagacity, integrity, and un- 
swerving patriotism with which President Lincoln lias 
performed the duties of his high office, and with their 
clearer perception of the ultimate issue of that great 
contest between freedom and slavery, which the pro* 
gress of events had rendered inevitable,- the people look 
back with entire satisfaction upon the vote which, in 
1860, made Mr. Lincoln President of the United States. 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 43 

Daring the four months that intervened between the 
election of Mr. Lincoln and his inauguration, the con- 
spiracy which had been so long ripening throughout the 
Southern States rapidly took on a menacing and dan- 
gerous form. The conspirators used his election to stir 
up the passions of the people, and where they were not 
able to carry the people with them, they did not hesitate 
to overawe them by violent measures. Under such ap- 
pliances, conventions in six States — South Carolina, 
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas — 
passed ordinances of secession, and appointed delegates 
to meet in convention at Montgomery, Alabama. This 
convention met February 4. It adopted a provisional 
constitution for the Confederate States, and chose Jeffer- 
son Davis and Alexander H. Stephens President and 
Vice-President. The rebel government was at once put 
in operation, and measures were taken to prepare the 
moderate amount of force which, in the view of the con- 
spirators, was all that would be necessary for the entire 
overthrow of the Government of the United States, and 
the establishment of their new power upon the ac- 
knowledged corner-stone of slavery. 

It cannot be denied that the course which was pur- 
sued at Washington was not calculated to give them any 
just idea of the labor which they had undertaken. Mr. 
Buchanan, with a pusillanimous desire to avoid a col- 
lision during his official existence, careless of whatever 
deluge might come after him, proclaimed that the Gov- 
ernment had no right or power to resist this attack made 
upon the life of the nation, and lifted not a finger to pre- 
vent the seizure of the forts and Government posts and 
property, until, throughout the seceded States, the flag 
of the United States floated over Fort Sumter and Fort 



44 LIFE OF ABEAnAM LINCOLX. 

Pickens alone, and around these hostile battery aftei 
battery was rising and regiments were gathering, eager 
to drive out the feeble garrisons which still there main- 
tained their country's honor. 

The feeling at the North was one of great anxiety, 
although there was very little anticipation that the re- 
bellion would be pushed to the bloody arbitrament of 
arms. The people had confidence in the honesty and 
patriotism of the leader whom they had chosen, and they 
trusted that a short experience would be enough to con- 
vince the people of the Southern States that their rights 
were in no danger at the hands of the incoming admin- 
istration, and that the tempest would die away, though 
muttering, along the distant horizon. 

It was while this tempest was thus rising that Mr 
Lincoln on February 11th, 1861, left his home at Spring 
field, 111., to go to Washington. It was an anxious 
moment for him, and that he felt it as such was clearly 
shown by the words in which he bade farewell to his 
neighbors who had accompanied him to the cars. 

"My friends," said he, "no one not in my position 
can appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. To 
this people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived 
more than a quarter of a century; here my children 
were born, and here one of them lies buried. I know 
not how soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves 
upon me which is, perhaps, greater than that which has 
devolved -upon any other man since the days of Wash- 
ington. He never would have succeeded except for the 
aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times 
relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same 
Divine aid which sustained him, and on the same 
Almighty Being I place my reliance for support, and I 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 45 

Lope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive 
that Divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, 
but with which success is certain. Again, Ibid }'on all 
an affectionate farewell.'' 

Mr. Lincoln, upon this journey, passed through In- 
dianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburg, Cleveland, 
Buffalo, Albany, New York, Trenton. Philadelphia and 
Harrisburg. He met the Legislatures of Indiana, Ohio, 
New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, wdiich were 
then in session at the capitals of those States, and to 
them and. to the crowds of citizens which gathered 
everywhere along his way he made brief addresses, the 
main scope of which was to say that if the people only 
stood firm in maintaining the Constitution and the Gov- 
ernment, no power could overthrow them. 

^t Philadelphia, information was communicated to 
him of a plot which was on foot to assassinate him at 
Baltimore. The existence of such a plot had been sus- 
pected before. Threats had been freely made by the 
more fanatical Southern men that lie never would reach 
Washington alive. An attempt was made to throw 
from the track the car in which he was riding, on his 
journey through Ohio; and, just as he was leaving 
Cincinnati, a hand-grenade was found to have been 
secreted on board the cars. Investigations were set on 
foot which revealed the fact that a small gang of assas- 
sins, under the leadership of an Italian who assumed the 
name of Orsini, had undertaken to do the work of the 
slaveholders, by murdering Mr. Lincoln as he passed 
through Baltimore. The only precaution which he 
took against this attack was to leave Harrisburg one 
train earlier than had been expected. He thus passed 
through Baltimore in the night, and arrived in Wash- 



46 LIFE OF AUK A II AM LINCOLN. 

ington on the morning of Saturday, the 23d of Febru- 
ary, where his safe arrival was greeted with joy by his 
friends, and ill-concealed disappointment by his enemies. 
The threats against his life were continued, and but for 
the watchfulness and determination of his friends, and 
the care and military preparations of General Scott, it is 
quite probable that his inauguration would never have 
taken place. 

That important event took place on the 4th of March, 
1S61. Before taking the oath of office, Mr. Lincoln 
delivered his inaugural address to an immense crowd 
which had gathered in front of the Capitol to hear it 
and to witness the ceremony. The address was a plain, 
straightforward talk from the heart of an honest 
man to the people. He began by showing, in the 
clearest way, that there was no ground for the appre- 
hension which seemed to exist at the South that " their 
property, their peace and their personal security were to 
be endangered." lie declared that he took the oath 
to support the Constitution " with no mental reserva- 
tions." He argued briefly and clearly the question of 
secession, averring that, in spite of all that had been 
done at the South, the Union was unbroken, and he 
should, to the extent of his ability, take care " that the 
laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the 
States;" that in doing this there would be no bloodshed, 
u unless it be forced upon the national authority," but 
that the power of the Government would be used " to 
hold, occupy and possess the property and places be- 
longing to the Government, and to collect the duties and 
imposts ;" and he closed his address with an earnest ap- 
peal to all who really loved the Union, to pause and 
consider " before entering upon so grave a matter as the 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 47 

destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, 
its memories and its hopes." " In your hands, my dis- 
satisfied fellow countrymen," said he, " and not in 
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The 
Government will not assail .you. You can have no 
conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You 
have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Gov- 
ernment, while I shall have the most solemn one to 
'preserve, protect and defend' it. I am loth to close. 
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be ene- 
mies. Though passion may have strained, it must not 
break our bonds of affection. The mystic cord of mem- 
ory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave 
to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad 
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again 
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of 
our nature." 

Mr. Lincoln set himself at once at work upon the 
arduous duties of his office, constructing his Cabi- 
net, appointing officers throughout the country, and 
preparing, as far as possible, to repel any attack which 
might be made upon the Government. The treachery 
of Mr. Buchanan and his Cabinet had scattered the Navy 
of the United States to the four quarters of the globe, 
and sent almost all of its small Army to where a similar 
act of treachery on the part of General Twiggs rendered 
it useless. A small expedition was, however, prepared at 
New York, which "was understood to be for the relief of 
the imperilled garrision of Fort Sumter, whose supplies 
had been stopped by the authorities at Charleston, so 
tnat the day when they must leave the fort, if not re- 
lieved, was close at hand. The rebel leaders, however, 
did not choose to await that day. They opened their 



48 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

guns upon Fort Sumter on the 12th of April, and after a 
bombardment of thirty-three hours, compelled the gar- 
rison to surrender. They thus proved the truth of Mr. 
Lincoln's words, that they would be the aggressors if 
any conflict was to arise. 

This attack upon the Government was greeted 
throughout the North with a universal cry of indig- 
nation. The fires of patriotism, which the conspirators 
had supposed to be buried for ever beneath seltishness 
and greed, burst forth with volcanic flames, which 
shriveled party ties and selfish interests like stubble. 
The people rose as one man to the defense of their Gov- 
ernment and their flag ; and even those whose sympathies 
had till then been with the South, were compelled either 
to join openly in .the popular movement against the re- 
bellion, or to keep silence. INTor was the aid and sym- 
pathy, which Mr. Lincoln received from those who had 
opposed him, compulsory only. There was^ large class 
w r ho joined as heartily in standing by him, as any of his 
supporters. They had opposed him in the Presidential 
election; they had been prepared to oppose his Admin- 
istration politically ; but when the Government was 
thus assailed, they forgot all former opposition, and 
came enthusiastically to its support. 

AVe cannot give a better idea of the state of feeling 
among this large part of the Democratic party, than by 
quoting a speech of Senator Douglas to the citizens of 
Chicago, on the 1st day of May; and it must not be 
thought that this was a solitary and incongruous utter- 
ance from him. From the time of the election he had 
used all his influence to check the current which was 
hurrying the country into civil war. He had visited 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLX. 49 

the South, and spoken in several cities in favor of the 
Union, and of abiding by the result of the election into 
which the Southern people had gone and in which they 
had been fairly defeated. His words fell on deaf cars, 
and he was finally insulted by a mob in Xew Orleans, 
and came home to stand by the Government. The 
words of this Chicago speech of his are as applicable 
now as then. We should never for a moment forget 
that " there can be no neutrals in this war ; only patriots^ 
or traitors." 

The speech was delivered at the "Wigwam, in which 
Mr. Lincoln was nominated, packed with ten thousand 
persons, and is as follows : 

" Mr. Chairman — I thank you for the kind terms 
in which you have been pleased to welcome me. I 
thank the Committee and citizens of Chicago for this 
grand and imposing reception. I beg you to believe 
that I will not do you nor myself the injustice to be- 
lieve this magnificent ovation is personal homage to 
myself. I rejoice to know that it expresses your de 
votion to the Constitution, the Union, and the flag of 
our country. 

" I will not conceal my gratification at the incontro- 
vertible test this vast audience presents — that whatever 
political differences or party questions may have divided 
us, 3^et you all had a conviction, that when the country 
should be in danger, my loyalty could be relied on. 
That the present danger is imminent, no man can con- 
ceal. If war must come, if the bayonet must be used 
to maintain the Constitution, I can say before God that 
my conscience is clear. I have struggled long for a 



50 LIFE OF AISISA1JAM LINCOLN. 

peaceful solution of the difficulty. I have not only 
tendered those States what was theirs of right, but I 
have gone to the Yery extreme of magnanimity. 

" The return we receive is war, armies marched upon 
our Capitol, obstructions and dangers to our navigation, 
letters of marque to invite pirates to prey upon our 
commerce, a concerted movement to blot out the United 
States of America from the map of the globe. The 
question is, Are we to maintain the country of our 
fathers, or allow it to be stricken down by those who, 
when they can no longer govern, threaten to destroy ? 

" What cause, what excuse do disunionists give us 
for breaking up the best government on which the sun 
of heaven ever shed its rays ? They are dissatisfied 
with the result of a Presidential election. Did they 
never get beaten before ? Are we to resort to the sword 
when we get defeated at the ballot-box? I understand 
it, that the voice of the people, expressed in the mode 
appointed by the Constitution, must command the 
obedience of every citizen. They assume, on the elec- 
tion of a particular candidate, that their rights are not 
safe in the Union. What evidence do they present of 
this ? I defy any man to show any act on which it is 
based? What act has been omitted to be done? I 
appeal to these assembled thousands that, so far as the 
constitutional rights of the Southern States — I will say 
the constitutional rights of slaveholders — are concerned, 
nothing has been done, and nothing omitted, of which 
they can complain. 

"There has never been a time, from the day that 
Washington was inaugurated first President of these 
United States, when the rights of the Southern States 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 51 

stood tinner under the laws of the land than they do 
now ; there never was a time when they had not as good 
a cause for disunion as they have to day. What good 
cause have they now that has not existed under every 
Administration ? 

" If they say the Territorial question — now, for the 
first time, there is no Act of Congress prohibiting 
slavery any where. If it be the non-enforcement of the 
laws, the only complaints that I have heard have been 
of the too vigorous and faithful fulfilment of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law. Then what reason have they ? 

" The slavery question is a mere excuse ; the election 
of Lincoln is a mere pretext. The present secession 
movement is the result of an enormous conspiracy 
formed more than a year since, formed by leaders in the 
Southern Confederacy more than twelve months ago. 

" They used the slavery question as a means to aid 
the accomplishment of their ends. They desired the 
election of a Northern candidate by a sectional vote, in 
order to show that the two sections cannot live together. 
When the history of the two years from the Lecompton 
charter down to the Presidential election, shall be writ- 
ten, it will be shown that the scheme was deliberately 
made to break up this Union. * * * * * But this is no 
time for a detail of causes. The conspiracy is now known. 
Armies have been raised; war is levied to accomplish it. 
There are onlj* two sides to the question. Every man 
must be for the United States, or against it. There can 
be no neutrals in this war; only patriots, or traitors. 

" Thank God, Illinois is not divided on this question. 
I know they expected to present a united South against 
a divided North. They hoped that in the Northern 



52 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLX. 

States, party questions would bring civil war between 
Democrats and Republicans, when the South would stop 
in with her cohorts, aid one party to conquer the other, 
and then make easy prey of the victors. Their scheme- 
was carnage and civil war at the North. * * * * * We 
cannot close our eyes to the sad and solemn fact that 
war does exist. The Government must be maintained, 
its enemies overthrown, and the more stupendous our 
preparations, the less the bloodshed and the shorter the 
struggle. But we must remember certain restraints on our 
actions even in time of war. We are a Christian people, 
and the war must be prosecuted in a manner recognized 
by Christian nations. We must not invade constitu- 
tional rights. The innocent must not suffer, nor women 
and children be the victims. Savages must not be let 
loose. But while I sanction no war upon the rights of 
others, I will implore my countrymen not to lay down 
their arms until our own rights are recognized. The 
Constitution and its guarantees are our birthright, and 1 
am ready to enforce that inalienable right to the last ex- 
tent. We cannot recognize secession. Recognize it 
once, and you have not only dissolved Government but 
you have destroyed social order, upturned the founda- 
tions of society. You have inaugurated anarchy in its 
worst form, and will shortly experience all the horrors 
of the French Revolution. 

" Then we have a solemn duty — to maintain the Gov- 
ernment. The greater our unanimity, the speedier the 
day of peace. We have prejudices to overcome from 
the few short months since of a fierce party contest. Yet 
these must be allayed. Let us lay aside all criminations 
and recriminations as to the origin of these difficulties. 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 53 

When we shall have again a country with the United 
States flag floating over it, and respected on every inch 
of American soil, it will then be time enough to ask 
who and what brought all this upon us. 

"I have said more than I intended to say. It is a 
sad task to discuss questions so fearful as civil war ; but 
sad as it is, bloody and disastrous as I expect it will be, 
I express it as my conviction before God, that it is the 
duty of every American citizen to rally round the flag 
of his country. 

" I thank you again for this magnificent demonstra- 
tion. By it you show that you have laid aside party 
strife. Illinois has a proud position — united, firm, de- 
termined never to permit the Government to be de- 
stroyed.'' 

Amid this outburst of patriotism among the people, the 
President on his part did not hesitate in the course which 
it behooved the Government to adopt. On the 15th of 
April he issued a proclamation calling out 75,000 militia 
to suppress the insurrection, and summoning Congress 
to meet in extra session on July 4th. On the 19th of 
April, by another proclamation, he declared the ports of 
the seceded States under blockade. Strong efforts were 
made, chiefly by leaders from Baltimore, to induce him 
to refrain from bringing troops to Washington ; but he 
resisted them, maintaining always the positions which 
he had taken in his inaugural address. The Virginia 
Convention sent .three delegates to Washington to ask 
him to communicate to the Convention the policy which 
he intended to pursue in regard to the Confederate 
States ; to which request the President sent a brief an- 
swer, reiterating the policy which he had so clearly laid 
down, and declaring^ that he should, if he could, repos- 



54 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

sess Fort Sumter and all other places which had been 
seized before the Government devolved upon him, and 
should, in any event, to the extent of his ability, " repel 
force by force." 

Two days after the receipt of this communication by 
that Convention, it was dragooned into passing an ordi- 
nance of secession, which, it was voted, should be sub- 
mitted to the people. The leaders, however, immc 
diately began hostilities against the United States, 
as if the vote had been already taken, and boldly an- 
nounced that, if any one voted against secession, he must 
leave the State. The rebel government was transferred 
to Richmond on the 21st of May, and the rebel army 
was pushed forward to be within striking distance of 
"Washington. 

Our Government also gathered together forces, and 
till the battle of Bull Run, the Northern people were 
confident that the rebellion would be speedily put down. 
That defeat, however, opened their eyes, and during the 
Fall of that year great exertions were made and a large 
army was collected at Washington, where it was organ- 
ized by General McClellan, who had been called to the 
capital, and. on the resignation of Gen. Scott, had been 
put in command. 

During the months of that Fall the President's 
thoughts were busied with the great interests . and 
responsibilities which were connected with the action of 
Congress in shaping the course which the Government 
should take, and in providing means for the raising and 
maintaining of large armies throughout the country ; with 
the finding out and putting in places of trust of men who 
were heartily loyal to the Government ; with the taking 
of active measures to counteract the schemes which 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLX. 55 

were being incessantly concocted by rebel sympathizers 
at the North to help the rebellion ; with the preservation 
of our foreign relations from entanglement, or possibly 
worse, and with a thousand great and intricate questions 
of public policy at home and abroad. 

The result of the case of the Trent, which, at one 
time, threatened to produce very serious results, was so 
disposed of as to place our Government in a decided 
vantage ground, and the words of the President, in his 
message to Congress on December 3d, 1861, were well 
warranted. Our Government " practised prudence and 
liberality toward foreign powers, averting causes of irri- 
tation, and with firmness maintaining our rights and 
honor." 

The questions arising out of slavery were naturally 
very troublesome and important. Efforts were made to 
induce the President to declare a general policy of eman- 
cipation, but in vain. The time for such a policy had 
not, in his opinion, yet come. Congress, at its extra 
session, had passed a law declaring that any slave used 
in aiding the rebellion should be free. Gen. Fremont, 
while in command of the Western Department, issued 
an order, on August 31, declaring martial law through- 
out the State of Missouri, confiscating the property of 
all who took up arms against the Government, and de- 
claring their slaves to be free men. The President, deem- 
ing that the time had not come for such action, made an 
order limiting the effect of Gen. Fremont's order to that 
fixed by the act of Congress. This action of his pro- 
voked censure from some, but most of the people were 
satisfied that he could tell better than they what course 
was best for the cause. It is certain that the effect of 



56 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

the course which he pursued was to restrain the border 
States from throwing their fortunes openly with the other 
slaveholding States. 

But all these many interests did not prevent the 
President from watching over the movements of the 
Army, to which they were all subsidiary. It would be 
too long to tell the history of the delays which wasted 
month after month, while the country grew anxious and 
impatient. The patience of the President was at last 
exhausted, and on the 27th of January, 1862, he issued 
a General Order that a general movement of our armies 
against the rebels be made on the 22d of February fol- 
lowing. A special order was made for the movements 
of the Army of the Potomac. Gen. McClellan insisted 
upon moving by the Peninsula, and was finally sustained 
by a council of war, which, however, made it a sine qua 
non that sufficient force should be left to protect the 
capital. The move was made, but the leaving of this 
sufficient force was a constant pretext for complaint on 
the part of Gen. McClellan. His Peninsular campaign 
was a continuation of the system of delays which had 
wasted the previous Autumn. The main feature of his 
communications to the Government was a constant call 
for reinforcements. Those of the President to him dis- 
played patience and a wisdom, which might well have 
been heeded — a common sense which is an important part 
of generalship, and a determination to let no obstacle stand 
in the way of the accomplishment of the great design of 
saving the nation. But procrastination and inefficiency 
were too powerful for him. The army was driven from 
before Richmond, and then, instead of being brought 
back in time to crush the rebel army in front of Wash- 



LIFE OF AU11AIIAM LINCOLN. 67 

ington, delays still wrought the same fearful result, and 
the long series of mishaps was crowned by the escape 
of Lee across the Potomac at Sharpsburg. 

During this time important events had transpired 
over the whole country, until the military aspect along 
the whole line of conflict, in spite of these misfortunes, 
was much better than it had been the year before. 

Great progress had been made in the feelings of the 
people on the slavery question. Slavery had been abol- 
ished in the District of Columbia, and the Army had 
been forbidden to return fugitives to their masters. Gen. 
Hunter in South Carolina had, in May, 1862, declared 
the slaves in his department to be free, because slavery 
and martial law were incompatible, but the President 
revoked this order as he had General Fremont's, be- 
cause, in his opinion, such action should not be left to 
commanders in the field, but must be the result of his 
own decision. He endeavored heartily to induce the 
border States to take action themselves looking to the 
ultimate emancipation of the slaves, but without success. 
Yet the feeling of the people became more and more 
hostile to slavery as the cause of the war and of its long 
continuance. More and more decided action was plainly 
called for, and the reasons agaiust the adoption of an 
avowed policy of emancipation became every day 
weaker. 

On the 22d of September, 1862, the President having 
become satisfied that the "paramount object" which he 
had in view, of saving the Union, would be assisted by 
such a step, issued the preliminary proclamation of 
emancipation, declaring that on the 1st of January, 
1863, "all persons held as slaves within any State, or 
designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then 



58 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then 
thenceforward and forever free." He thus gave to the 
people of the Southern States again an opportunity to 
choose between rebellion with emancipation, and obe- 
dience to the Government with the preservation of their 
slaves. They chose the former, and on the 1st of January, 
1863, he issued the immortal Proclamation of Emanci- 
pation, in which, " by virtue of the power" in him 
vested, " as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy 
of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion," 
and # "as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing 
said rebellion," he did, in accordance' with his purpose 
announced a hundred days previous, designate the States 
and parts of States then in rebellion, and ordered and 
declared that all persons held as slaves within their 
limits, " are and henceforward shall be free, and that the 
Executive Government of the United States, including 
the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize 
and maintain the freedom of said persons." 

This proclamation has been the subject of a great deal 
of discussion ever since. If it has not accomplished all 
that some expected it to do, its results have well justi- 
fied its issue. It defined the position of the Government 
clearly, and drew a line by which its friends and its ene- 
mies were thenceforth clearly divided. It drew to our 
side more unmistakably the sympathies of the friends 
of freedom everywhere, and shut up the path of the 
friends of the rebellion. From that day open help from 
abroad for the rebels has been impossible. It also 
showed the colored people that the path to the free- 
dom of their race clearly lay through the success of the 
Government, and the thousands of them who have since 
brought their strong arms to uphold the "stars and 



I 

LITE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 50 

stripes," and who Lave won a recognition of their courage 
in spite of hostility and detraction have given a testi- 
mony, which can never be broken down, in favor of the 
Proclamation. 

The prominent military features of the year 1863 
were the forward movement of the Army of the "Poto- 
mac under General Hooker, which was stopped by its 
defeat at Chancellors ville ; the incursion of Lee's army 
into Maryland and Pennsylvania, which was stopped by 
his defeat at Gettysburg ; the glorious campaign of Gen- 
eral Grant on the Mississippi, which culminated on the 
4th of July, in the surrender of Vicksbursr and which, 
with the capture of Port Hudson, accomplished the 
opening of the Mississippi and the division of the rebel 
territory ; and the march of the Army of the Cumber- 
land, driving Bragg before it beyond Chattanooga, its 
defeat at Chickamauga, and its subsequent glorious suc- 
cess at Missionary Kidge, which secured the hold which 
our arms had gained of East Tennessee. The victory at 
Gettysburg was briefly announced to the people by the 
President, with the request that thanksgiving be every- 
where offered for the success of our arms, and on the 15th 
of July, in view of this and the great successes in the 
Southwest, he appointed the 6th of August as a day ol 
National Thanksgiving. 

Prominent among the other incidents of the year was 
the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham by General Burnside, 
his trial and sentence, by a military tribunal, to impris- 
onment during the war, and the commutation of the 
sentence by the President to his removal beyond the 
lines. This action of the authorities was the occasion of 
a great outcry from the opposers of the Administration. 



60 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LIJ^COLIT. 

A large meeting of them was held in Albany on the sub- 
ject, to which Governor Seymour sent his famous letter, 
in which he said that, having thus far supported the Ad- 
ministration in the conduct of the war, they " now paused 
to see what kind of a Government it was." A copy of their 
resolutions was forwarded to the President, who wrote 
a letter in answer, arguing the question in the most clear 
and comprehensive way upon constitutional grounds, and 
grounds of common sense. The following brief summing 
up of the whole question was every where accepted as 
conclusive: " Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy 
who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agi- 
tator who induces him to desert? This is none the less 
injurious when effected by getting a father or brother or 
friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his 
feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier-boy that 
he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked Administration 
of a contemptible Government, too weak to arrest and 
punish him if he shall desert. I think that, in such a 
case, to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only 
constitutional, but withal a great mercy." 

The Ohio Democratic Convention made Vallandig- 
ham their candidate for Governor, and a Committee ap- 
pointed by it waited on the President to procure the re- 
call of their candidate. To this request the President 
sent an equally conclusive answer, and put these cavilers 
clearly in the wrong by telling them that he would re- 
lease Vallandigham without asking any pledge from him, 
if only a majority of the Committee would, in writing, 
commit themselves to the following propositions : 

" 1. That there is now rebellion in the United States, 
the object and tendency of which is to destroy the na- 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LIXCOLN. 61 

tional Union ; and that, in your opinion, an Army and 
Navy are constitutional means for suppressing that re- 
bellion. 

" 2. That no one of you will do anything which, in 
his own judgment, will tend to hinder the increase, or 
favor the decrease, or lessen the efficiency of the Army 
and Navy while engaged in the effort to suppress that 
rebellion. 

" 3. That each of you will, in his sphere, do all he can 
to have the officers, soldiers and seamen of the Army and 
Navy, while engaged in the effort to suppress the rebel- 
lion, paid, fed. clad, and otherwise well provided for and 
supported." 

Their refusal to pledge themselves to propositions so 
acceptable to every loyal man, was conclusive as to their 
purposes, and Ohio rejected them and their candidate by 
over 100,000 majority. 

The sympathizers with the rebels at the North did not 
confine themselves to mere representations to the Presi- 
dent. Their hostility to the Government culminated in 
riotous attempts to resist the draft, the most serious of 
which was in New York city, where they gained the 
upper hand of the authorities till put down by the Me- 
tropolitan Police and the troops, with the loss of many 
lives and the destruction of much property. This riot 
was made the occasion for strong urging of the President 
to abandon the idea of enforcing the draft, but he was 
not in the least shaken by it in his determination that 
the law should be enforced. Governor Seymour's de- 
clining to take measures to keep the peace when it was 
to be enforced, rendered it necessary to send troops to 
New York from the Army of the Potomac, and the sym- 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



pathizers with the rebels were thus at least able to fur- 
nish to them valuable assistance, for, by reason of this 
depletion of that army, Lee was enabled to send Long- 
street and his corps to Georgia, where their presence was 
the cause of our defeat at Chickamauga. The enforce- 
ment of the law in New York city was, however, com- 
plete, and produced a good effect all through the country. 

The President on repeated occasions during the year 
was called on to address the people, and never without 
saying some words of cheer or instruction. One of the 
best of these short speeches was delivered on the occa- 
sion of the dedication of the Soldiers' Cemetery at Get- 
tysburg, on November 19th, 1863, and was as follows : 

" Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in 
liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great 
civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are 
met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come 
to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting- 
place for those who here gave their lives that that na- 
tion might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that 
we should do this. 

" But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we can- 
not consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The 
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have 
consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. 
The world will little note, nor long remember what we 
say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to 
the unfinished work which they who fought here have 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. G3 

thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be 
here dedicated to the great task remaining us; 

that from these honored dead we take increased devo- 
tion to that cause for which they gave the last full meas- 
ure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these 
dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that 
government of the people, by the people and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth." 

A letter which he wrote in August, in answer to an 
invitation to attend the State Convention in Illinois, was 
also very acceptable to all true lovers of their country. 
Its simple logic applied to the troublesome questions of 
the day, and making them plain by the clear light which 
it threw upon them, was very satisfactory to the minds 
of the people, while their hearts were touched by its 
homely and genial spirit, its calm determination and its 
cheerful hope. 

The political action of the people throughout the 
Northern States was, this year, far more favorable to the 
Administration than in 1862. Confidence in the Presi- 
dent had grown among the people. His entire honesty 
of purpose, his clear headed sagacity and sound common 
sense, and his intense io^e for the principles of freedom, 
had gained for him their trust and affection, and every 
State, except New Jersey, cast heavy popular majorities 
in favor of the Administration. 

There had begun to be, before Congress met, a good 
deal of discussion as to the mode in which the people in 
the seceded States should be dealt with, as the military 
power of the rebellion was driven out of them. Our 
armies had won such successes that the question began 



64 LIFiS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

to be a practical one in Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkan- 
sas. In the President's message to Congress on Decem- 
ber 9th, 1863, he took up this question. He treated it 
as a practical matter which it behooved him to take in 
hand, and he annexed to his message the famous Am- 
nesty Proclamation. By this Proclamation he offered 
a free pardon to all persons who had participated in the 
rebellion, " with restoration of all rights of property, ex- 
cept as to slaves and in property cases where rights of 
third parties should have intervened," on condition of 
their taking and keeping an oath to support, protect and 
defend the Constitution and the Union and abide by and 
support all acts of Congress passed during the rebellion 
with reference to slaves, unless repealed, or modified, or 
made void by Congress or the Supreme Court, and all 
proclamations of the President with reference to slaves, 
unless modified, or made void by decision of the Su- 
r .eme Court. Certain ranks of rebel officers and offi- 
cials were excepted from the benefits of the Proclama- 
tion. It also provided that whenever, in any of the se- 
ceded States, a number of persons not less in numbei 
than one-tenth of the votes cast in such State at the 
Presidential election of 1860, who had taken and kept 
the oath above mentioned, and who were voters by the 
election laws of the State before it seceded, should re- 
establish a State government, which should be republi- 
can and not contravene that oath, it should be recognized 
as the true government of the State, and should, as pro- 
vided by the Constitution, be guaranteed a republican 
form of government, and be protected against invasion 
and domestic violence. 

This scheme was presented as " a mod© in and by 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 65 

which the national authority and loyal State govern- 
ments may be reestablished" within the States. It dif- 
fered widely from the views held by some of our states- 
men, who had claimed that there could be no such thing 
as " true governments" of the seceded States until re- 
formed by Congress, by passing through a territorial 
condition. The President's view, however, was sustained 
with remarkable unanimity by the Convention of the 
Union party at Baltimore, which admitted to participate 
in its action delegates from the seceded States, even 
though no such State governments had been formed, and 
took its candidate for Yice President from Tennessee. 
Such governments have been formed in Louisiana and in 
Arkansas. Pears were expressed by some lest these 
State governments, so formed, should prove themselves 
not true to freedom, but be still infected with the old 
poison of slavery. But thus far the reverse has been 
the effect, and each State has hastened to prohibit 
slavery within its borders. The Union men of the 
South, who have seen for themselves the evil effects of 
slavery, have been most determined that it should no 
longer stand to hinder the restoration of the Union, and 
most ready to pluck it up by the roots. Nor has this 
effect been confined to the seceded States. Both Mis- 
souri and Maryland have passed ordinances of emanci- 
pation. Kentucky has still held back, and her attitude 
in reference to slavery has sometimes given rise to un- 
pleasant apprehensions. Gov. Bramlette and some 
other Kentucky gentlemen, having called upon the 
President in relation to the draft 'in Kentucky, the fol- 
lowing letter from the President was called forth by the 
conversation which then ensued : 



G6 LIFE OF ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 

Executive Mansion, Washington, April 4, 1864. 
A. G. Hodges, Esq., Frarikfort,-Ky . : 

My Dear Sir — You ask me to put in writing the substance of what 
I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bram- 
lette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows : 

" I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is 
wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and 
yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me 
an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. 
It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, 
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. 
I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my 
view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in 
using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil adminis- 
tration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary 
abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly 
declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this 
day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract 
judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that 
my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability, im- 
posed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable 
means, that Government — that nation, of which that Constitution 
was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet 
preserve the Constitution ? By general law, life and limb must be 
protected ; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life ; but 
a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, 
otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indis- 
pensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preser- 
vation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and 
now avow it. I could not feel that r to the best of my ability, I had 
even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any 
minor matter, I should permit the wreck of Government, country 
and Constitution altogether. When, early in the war, General 
Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I 
did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little 
later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arm- 
ing of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indis- 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 67 

pensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted 
military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet 
think the indispensable necessity had come. "When, in March, and 
May, and July, 1862, 1 made earnest and successive appeals to the 
border States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the in- 
dispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the 
blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined 
the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alter- 
native of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitu- 
tion, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose 
the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss, but of 
this I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now 
shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home pop- 
ular sentiment, none in our white military force, no loss by it any- 
how, or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hun- 
dred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen and laborers. These are 
palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We 
have the men, and we could not have had them without the 
measure. 

"And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, 
test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the 
rebellion by force of arms, and in the next that he is for taking 
three hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side and 
placing them where they would be best for the measure he condemns. 
If he cannot face his case so stated, it is only because he cannot face 
the truth." 

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In tell- 
ing this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim 
not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have 
controlled me. Now at the end of three years' struggle, the nation's 
condition is not what either party, or any man, devised or expected. 
God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God 
now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the 
North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our com- 
plicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new causes • 
to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. 
Yours, truly, 
(Signed,) A. LINCOLN. 



68 LIF3 OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

As the time fixed for the meeting of the National 
Convention to nominate the candidates to be supported 
by the Unionists drew nigh, the question who was to 
be nominated came up for discussion. It was very 
soon seen that no name carried such strength with the 
people as that of Abraham Lincoln. There were some, 
of course, who were not satisfied with him, and some 
who feared for the result of his nomination ; and from 
these quarters came a movement to have the meeting of 
the Convention postponed ; but Gov. Chase, who was 
the favorite candidate with most of them, having de- 
clined to allow his name to be used, the movement 
gained no strength. It was felt everywhere that Mr. 
Lincoln should be the man ; no man was so hated by 
the rebels ; no other nomination could so plainly tell 
them that the people of the North were united in their 
determination, made of their own free will, to maintain 
the Union and suppress the rebellion. In no other way 
could they be so well taught the lesson that, in a popu- 
lar Government, the will of the majority must rule, and 
that the substitution of bullets for ballots is a thing 
which can never be submitted to. 

The Convention, consisting of over five hundred dele- 
gates, met at Baltimore on Tuesday, June 8th, 1864. It 
was called to order by Senator Morgan, the Chairman 
of the National Committee ; Dr. Robert J. Breckin- 
ridge of Kentucky was chosen temporary Chairman, 
and made a speech to the Convention of great power. 
His position and character, his knowledge of the mat- 
ters of which he spoke by dread experience, his lofty 
patriotism and burning earnestness gave his speech great 
effect. Ex-Gov. Dennison of Ohio was chosen perma- 
nent Chairman of the Convention, with twenty-three 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 69 

Yice Presidents and twenty-three Secretaries. The fol- 
lowing was the platform adopted on the second day 
without a whisper of dissent. 

THE BALTIMORE PLATFORM. 

Resolved, That it is the highest duty of every American citizen 
to maintain against all their enemies the integrity of the Union 
and the paramount authority of. the Constitution and laws of the 
United States ; and that, laying aside all differences and political 
opinions, we pledge ourselves as Union men, animated bv a com- 
mon sentiment and aiming at a common object, to do every thing 
in our power to aid the Government in quelling by force of arms 
the rebellion now raging against its authority, and in bringing to 
the punishment due to their crimes the rebels and traitors arrayed 
against it. - 

Resolved, That wq approve the determination of the Govern- 
ment of the United States not to compromise with rebels, or to 
offer any terms of peace except such as may be based upon an 
unconditional surrender of their hostility and a return to their 
just allegiance to the Constitution and laws of the United States, 
and that wo- call upon the Government to maintain this position 
and to prosecute the war with the utmost possible vigor to the 
complete suppression of the rebellion, in full reliance upon the 
self-sacrifices, the patronism, the heroic valor and the undying 
devotion of the American people to their country and its free 
institutions. 

Resolved, That as slavery was the cause and now constitutes 
the strength of this rebellion, and as it must be always and every- 
where hostile to the principles of republican government, justice 
and the national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation 
from the soil of the republic ; and that we uphold and maintain 
the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own 
defense, has aimed a death-blow at the gigantic evil. We are in 
favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to 
be made by the people, in conformity with its provisions, as shall 
terminate and forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the 
limits or the jurisdiction of the United States. 



70 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Resolved, That the thanks of the American people are due to 
the soldiers and sailors of the Army and the Navy, who have 
periled their lives in defense of their country and in vindication 
of the honor of the flag; that the nation owes to them some per- 
manent recognition of their patriotism and their valor, and ample 
and permanent provision for those of their survivors who have 
received disabling and honorable wounds in the service of their 
country, and that the memories of those who have fallen in its 
defense shall be held in grateful and everlasting remembrance. 

Resolved, That we approve and applaud the practical wisdom, 
the unselfish patriotism, and the unswerving fidelity to the Con- 
stitution and the principles of American liberty with which 
Abraham Lincoln has discharged, under circumstances of unpar- 
alleled difficulty, the great duties and responsibilities of the Presi- 
dential office; that we approve and endorse, as demanded by the 
emergency and essential to the perservation of the nation, and as 
within the provisions of the Constitution, the measures and acts 
which he has adopted to defend the nation against its open and 
secret foes ; that^we approve especially the Proclamation of Eman- 
cipation and the employment as Union soldiers of men heretofore 
held in slavery ; and that we have full confidence in his deter- 
mination to carry these and all other constitutional measures, 
essential to the salvation of the country, into full and completo, 
effect. 

Resolved, That we deem it essential to the general welfare that 
harmony should prevail in our national councils, and we regard as 
worthy of public confidence and official trust those only who 
cordially endorse the principles proclaimed in these resolutions, 
and which should characterize the administration of the Govern- 
ment. 

Resolved, That the Government owes to all men employed in 
its armies, without regard to distinction of color, the full pro- 
tection of the laws of war, and that any violation of these laws, 
or the usages of civilized nations in time of war, by the rebels 
now in arms, should be made the subject of prompt and full 
redress. 

Resolved, That the foreign immigration which in the past has 



LIFE OF ABEAIIAM LINCOLN. 71 

added so much to the wealth, development of resources, and in- 
crease of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all 
nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just 
policy. 

Resolved, That we are in favor of a speedy construction of the 
railroad to the Pacific. 

Resolved, That the national faith, pledged for the redemption of 
the public debt, must be kept inviolate, and that for this purpose 
we recommend economy and rigid responsibility in the public ex- 
penditures, and a vigorous and just system of taxation. That it 
is the duty of every loyal state to sustain the credit and promote 
the use of the national currency. 

Resolved, That we approve the position taken by the Govern- 
ment : that the people of the United States can never regard with 
indifference the attempt of any Foreign Power to overthrow by 
force, or to supplant by fraud, the institutions of any Republican 
Government on the Western Continent; and that they will view 
with extreme jealousy, as menacing to the peace and independence 
of this our country, the efforts of any such power to obtain new 
footholds for monarchical governments, sustained by foreign mili- 
tary force, in near proximity to the United States. 

After the adoption of the platform, a motion was 
made that Abraham Lincoln be nominated for Presi- 
dent by acclamation. It had been known from the 
first that no other result could be arrived at. Dr. 
Breckinridge in his address had said, "It is just as 
certain, now before you utter it, whose name you will 
utter, and which will be responded to from one end to 
the other of this nation, as it will after it has been 
uttered and recorded by your Secretary." 

But it was thought best not to take a vote by accla- 
mation, but by ballot in the usual way, to prevent the 
falsehood which would otherwise have declared that the 
nomination was not the free choice of the Convention, 



V2 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

but was imposed upon it by clamor. The ballot was 
held, and the only votes that were not given to Abra- 
ham Lincoln were the twenty-two votes of Missouri, 
which, as was explained by the Chairman of the Delega- 
tion, were given under positive instructions, for Gen. 
Grant. Mr. Lincoln received four hundred and ninety- 
seven votes, and, on motion of Mr. Hume of Missouri, 
the nomination was made unanimous, amid intense en- 
thusiasm. 

The Convention having finished its business, ad- 
journed at the close of the second day. On Thursday, 
June 9th, the Committee appointed by the Convention 
to inform Mr. Lincoln of his nomination, waited upon 
him at the White House. Gov. Dennison, the Presi- 
dent of the Convention and Chairman of the Commit- 
tee, addressed him as follows : 

Me. Peesident : The National Union Convention, which closed 
its sittings at Baltimore yesterday, appointed a Committee, con- 
sisting of one from each State, with myself as Chairman, to in- 
form you of your unanimous nomination by that Convention for 
election to the office of President of the United States. That Com- 
mittee, I have the honor of now informing you, is present. On its 
behalf I have also the honor of presenting you with a copy of the 
resolutions or platform adopted by that Convention, as expressive 
of its sense and of tho sense of the loyal people of the country 
which it represents, of the principles and policy that should char- 
acterise the administration of the Government in the present con- 
dition of the country. I need not say to you, sir, that the Con- 
vention, in thus unanimously nominating you for reelection, but 
gave utterance to the almost universal voice of the loyal people 
of the country. To doubt of your triumphant election would be 
little short of abandoning the hope of a final suppression of the 
rebellion and the restoration of the Government of the insurgent 
States. Neither the Convention nor those represented by that 
body entertained any doubt as to the final result, under your ad- 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ^3 

ministration, sustained by the loyal people, and by our noble Army 
and gallant Navy. Neither did the Convention, nor do this Com- 
mitcee^doubt the speedy suppression of this most wicked and un- 
provoked rebellion. 

A copy of the resolutions was here handed to the 
President. 

I would add, Mr. President, that it would be the pleasure of the 
Committee to communicate to you within a few days, through one 
of its most accomplished members, Mr. Curtis, of New -York, by 
letter, more at length the circumstances under which you have 
been placed in nomination for the Presidency. 

The President said : 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee : I will 
neitherconceal my gratification, nor restrain the expression of my 
gratitude, that the Union people, through their Convention, in the 
continued effort to save and advance the nation, have deemed me 
not unworthy to remain in my present position. I know no reason 
to doubt that I shall accept the nomination tendered ; and yet, 
perhaps, I should not declare definitely before reading and con- 
sidering what is called the platform. I will say now, however, 
that I approve the declaration in favor of so amending the Con- 
stitution as to prohibit slavery throughout the nation. When the 
people in revolt, with the hundred days' explicit notice that they 
could within those days resume their allegiance without the over- 
throw of their institutions, and that they could not resume it 
afterward, elected to stand out, such an amendment of the Con- 
stitution as is now proposed became a fitting and necessary con- 
clusion to the final success of the Union cause. Such alone can 
meet and cover all cavils. I now perceive its importance and em- 
brace it. In the joint names of Liberty and Union let us labor to 
give it legal form and practical effect. 

At the conclusion of the President's speech, all of the 
Committee shook him cordially by the hand and offered 
their personal congratulations. 

And so Abraham Lincoln comes a second time before 
the people of the United States for their suffrages, not 
by anv procurement of his own, however. He did not 
4 



74 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

lift a finger to secure his own re- nomination. The Con- 
vention that nominated him was fresh from the people, 
and represented the wishes of the people to a remark- 
able degree. It is the people who have chosen him for 
their leader, because they have confidence in him, and 
because they are determined that the man against whom 
the slave holders rebelled when lawfully chosen to his 
high office, shall yet be obeyed throughout the whole 
country, South as well as North, as the President of an 
undivided nation. 

The letter of the Committee and the reply of Mr. 
Lincoln are as follows : 

ACCEPTANCE OF MR. LINCOLN. 

ADDRESS OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED AT BALTIMORE. 

Hon. Abraham Lincoln : New York, June 14, 1864. 

Sir — The National Union Convention, which assembled in Balti- 
more on June 7, 1864, has instructed us to inform you that you 
were nominated with enthusiastic unanimity for the Presidency of 
the United States for four years from the 4th of March next. 

The resolutions of the Convention, which we have already had the 
pleasure of placing in your hands, are a full and clear statement of 
the principles which inspired its action, and which, as we believe, 
the great body of Union men in the country heartily approve. 
Whether those resolutions express the national gratitude to our 
soldiers and sailors, or the national scorn of compromise with rebels, 
and consequent dishonor, or the patriotic duty of union and success ; 
whether they approve the Proclamation of Emancipation, the consti- 
tutional amendment, the employment of former slaves as Union sol- 
diers, or the solemn obligation of the Government promptly to 
redress the wrongs of every soldier of the Union, of whatever color 
or race ; whether they declare the inviolability of the pledged faith 
of the nation, or offer the national hospitality to the oppressed of 
every land, or urge the union by railroad of the Atlantic and Pacific 
oceans ; whether they recommend public economy and vigorous tax- 
ation, or assert the fixed popular opposition to the establishment by 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LIXCOIJN - . 75 

armed force of foreign monarchies in the immediate neighborhood of 
the United States, or declare that those only are worthy of official 
trust who approve unreservedly the views and policy indicated in the 
resolutions — they were equally hailed with the heartiness of profound 
conviction. 

Believing with you, sir, that this is the people's war for the main- 
tenance of a Government which you have justly described as " of the 
people, by the people, for the people," we are very sure that you will 
be glad to know, not only from the resolutions themselves, but from 
the singular harmony and. enthusiasm with which they were 
adopted, how warm is the popular welcome of every measure in the 
prosecution of the war, which is as vigorous, unmistakable and un- 
faltering as the national purpose itself. No right, for instance, is so 
precious and sacred to the American heart as that of personal lib- 
erty. Its violation is regarded with just, instant, and universal jeal- 
ousy. Yet, in this hour of peril, every faithful citizen concedes that, 
for the sake of national existence and the common welfare, individual 
liberty may, as tke Constitution provides in case of rebellion, be 
sometimes summarily constrained, asking only with painful anxiety 
that in every instance, and to the least detail, that absolute necessary 
power shall not be hastily or unwisely exercised. 

"We believe, sir, that the honest will of the Union men of the coun- 
try was never more truly represented than in this Convention. 
Their purpose we believe to be the overthrow of armed rebels in the 
field, and the security of permanent peace and union, by liberty and 
justice, under the Constitution. That these results are to be 
achieved amid cruel perplexities, they are fully aware. That they 
are to be reached only through cordial unanimitjr of counsel, is un- 
deniable. That good men may sometimes differ as to the means and 
the time, they know. That in the conduct of all human affairs the 
highest duty is to determine, in the angry conflict of passion, how 
much good may be practically accomplished, is their sincere persua- 
sion. They have watched your official course, therefore, with un- 
flagging attention ; and amid the bitter taunts of eager friends and 
the fierce denunciation of enemies, now moving too fast for some, 
now too slowly for others, they have seen you throughout this tre- 
mendous contest patient, sagacious, faithful, just ;• leaning upon the 
heart of the great mass of the people, and satisfied to be moved by 
its mighty pulsations. 



76 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



It is for this reason that, long before the Convention met, the pop- 
ular instinct indicated you as its candidate ; and the Convention, 
therefore, merely recorded the popular will. Your character and 
career prove your unswerving fidelity to the cardinal principles of 
American liberty and of the American Constitution. In the name 
of that liberty and Constitution, sir, we earnestly request your ac- 
ceptance of this nomination ; reverently commending our beloved 
country, and you, its Chief Magistrate, with all its brave sons who, 
on sea and land, are faithfully defending the good old American 
cause of equal rights, to the blessing of Almighty God. 

We are, sir, very respectfully, your friends and fellow citizens, 



WM. DENNISON,0., Chairman. 
JOSIAH DRUMMOND, Maine. 
THOS. E. SAWYER, N. H. 
BRADLEY BARLOW, Vt. 
A. H. BULLOCK, Mass. 
A. M. GAMMELL, R. I. 
C. S. BUSHNELL, Conn. 
G. W. CURTIS, N. Y. 
W. A. NEWELL, N. J. 
HENRY JOHNSON, Penn. 
N. B.SMITHERS, Del. 
W. L. W. SEABROOK, Md. 
JOHN F. HUME, Mo. 
G. W. HITE, Ky. 
E. P. TYFFE, Ohio. 
CYRUS M. ALLEN, Ind. 



W. BUSHNELL, 111. 

L. P. ALEXANDER, Mich. 

A. W. RANDALL, Wis. 

A. OLIVER, Iowa. 

THOMAS SIMPSON, Minn. 

JOHN BID WELL, Cal. 

THOMAS II. PEARNE, Oregon. 

LEROY KRAMER, West Va. 

A. C. WILDER, Kansas. 

M. M. BRIEN, Tennessee. 

J. P. GREVES, Nevada. 

A. A. ATOCHA, La! 

A. S. PADDOCK, Nebraska. 

VALENTINE DELL, Arkansas. 

JOHN A. NYE, Colorado. 

A. B. SLOANAKER, Utah. 



EEPLT OF MR. LINCOLN. 



Executive Mansion, Washington, June 27, 1864. 

Hon. Wm. Dennison and others, a Committee of the Union Natiouil 
Committee : * 

Gentlemen — Your letter of the 14th inst., formally notifying me 
that I have been nominated by the Convention you represent for the 
Presidency of the United States for four years from the 4th of March 
next has been received. The nomination is gratefully accepted, as 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 77 

the resolutions of the Convention, called the platform, are heartily- 
approved. 

While the resolution in regard to the supplanting of republican 
government upon the Western Continent is fully concurred in, there 
might be misunderstanding were I not to say that the position of the 
Government in relation to the action of France in Mexico, as assumed 
through the State Department and endorsed by the Convention 
among the measures and acts of the Executive, will be faithfully- 
maintained so long as the state of facts shall leave that position per- 
tinent and applicable. 

I am especially gratified that the soldier and the seaman were not 
forgotten by the Convention, as they forever must and will be re- 
membered by the grateful country for whose salvation they devote 
their lives. 

Thanking you for the kind and complimentary terms in which 
you have communicated the nomination and other proceedings of the 
Convention, I subscribe myself, 

Your obedient servant, 

ABRAHAM LIXCOLK 



In so brief a sketch of Mr. Lincoln's life, we have been compelled 
to omit very many matters of interest. A full account of even the 
last four years of it would fill volumes. But we have endeavored 
to give a just idea of the man himself. A prominent statesman of 
the country once said that after having studied the character of Mr. 
Lincoln carefully, he had come to the conclusion that God had 
raised, him up to carry the nation through the rebellion, just as 
Washington was raised up to carry it through the Revolution, and 
certainly no one of his predecessors, not even Washington, encoun- 
tered difficulties of equal magnitude, or was called to perform 
duties of equal responsibility. He was elected by a minority of 
the popular vote, and his election was regarded by a majority of 
the people as the immediate occasion, if not the cause of civil 
war; yet upon him devolved the necessity of carrying on that 



78 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

war, and of combining and wielding the energies of the 
nation for its successful prosecution. The task, under all the 
circumstances of the case, was one of the most gigantic that 
ever fell to the lot of the head of any nation. 

From the outset, Mr. Lincoln's reliance was upon the spirit 
and patriotism of the people. He had no overweening esti- 
mate of his own sagacity ; he was quite sensible of his lack 
of that practical knowledge of men and affairs which experi- 
ence of both alone can give ; but he had faith in the devotion 
of the people to the principles of Republican government, in 
their attachment to the Constitution and the Union, and in 
that intuitive sagacity of a great community which always 
transcends the most cunning devices of individual men, and, 
in a great and perilous crisis, more resembles inspiration than 
the mere deductions of the human intellect. At the very outset 
of his administration, President Lincoln cast himself without 
reserve* and without fear, upon this reliance. It has ever 
been urged against him as a reproach that he has not assumed 
to lead and control public sentiment, but has been content to 
be the exponent and the executor of its will. Possibly an 
opposite course might have succeeded, but possibly, also, it 
might have ended in disastrous and fatal failure. One thing 
is certain : the policy which he did pursue has not failed. 
The rebellion has not succeeded ; the authority of, the Gov- 
ernment has not been overthrown ; no new government, rest- 
ing on slavery as its corner-stone, has yet been established 
upon this continent, nor has any foreign nation been provoked 
or permitted to throw its sword into the scale against us. A 
different policy might have done better, but it might also 
have done worse, A wise and intelligent people will hesitate 
long before they condemn an administration which has done 
well, on the mere hypothesis that another might have done 
better. 

In one respect President Lincoln has achieved a wonderful 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 79 

success. He has maintained, through the terrible trials of his 
administration, a reputation, with the great body of the 
people, for unsullied integrity, of purpose and of conduct, 
which even Washington did not surpass, and which no Pres- 
ident since Washington has equalled. lie has had command 
of an army greater than that of any living monarch ; he has 
wielded authority less restricted than that conferred by any 
other constitutional government; he has disbursed sums of 
money equal to the exchequer of any nation in the world ; 
yet no man, of any party, believes him in any instance to 
have aimed at his own aggrandizement, to have been actuated 
by personal ambition, or to have consulted any other interest 
than the welfare of his country, and the perpetuity of its 
Republican form of government. This of itself is a success 
which may well challenge universal admiration, for it is one 
which is the indispensable condition of all other forms of 
success. No man whose public integrity was open to sus- 
picion, no matter what might have been his abilities or his 
experience, could possibly have retained enough of public 
confidence to carry the country through such a contest as 
that in which we are now involved. No President suspected 
of seeking his own aggrandizement at the expense of his 
country's liberties, could ever have received such enormous 
grants of power as were essential to the successful prosecution 
of this war. They were lavishly and eagerly conferred upon 
Mr. Lincoln, because it was known and felt everywhere that 
he would not abuse them. Faction has had in him no mark 
for its assaults. The weapons of party spirit have recoiled 
harmlessly from the shield of his unspotted character. 

It was this unanimous confidence in the disinterested purity 
of his character, and in the perfect integrity of his public pur- 
poses, far more than any commanding intellectual ability, that 
enabled Washington to hold the faith and confidence of the 
American people steadfast for seven years, while they waged 



80 LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

the unequal war required to achieve their independence. 
And it certainly is something more than a casual coincidence 
that this same element, as rare in experience as it is transcen- 
dent in importance, should have characterized the President 
upon whom devolves the duty of carrying the country through 
this second and far more important and sanguinary struggle. 

No one can read Mr. Lincoln's state papers without per- 
ceiving in them a most remarkable faculty of "putting things" 
so as to command the attention and assent of the common 
people. His style of thought as well as of expression is thor- 
oughly in harmony with their habitual modes of thinking and 
of speaking. His intellect is keen, emphatically logical in its 
action, and capable of the closest and most subtle analysis : 
and he uses language for the sole purpose of stating, in the 
clearest and simplest possible form, the precise idea he wishes 
to convey. He has no pride of intellect — not the slightest 
desire for display — no thought or purpose but that of making 
everybody understand precisely what he believes and means 
to utter. And while this sacrifices the graces of style, it gains 
immeasurably in practical force and effect. It gives to his 
public papers a weight and influence with the mass of the 
people, which no public man of this country has ever before 
attained. And this is heightened by the atmosphere of humor 
which seems to pervade his mind, and which is just as natural 
to it and as attractive and softening a portion of it, as the 
smoky hues of Indian summer are of the charming season to 
which they belong. His nature is eminently genial, and he 
seems to be incapable of cherishing an envenomed resentment. 
And although he is easily touched by whatever is painful, the 
elasticity of his temper and his ready sense of the humorous 
break the force of anxieties and responsibilities under which 
a man of harder though perhaps a higher nature would sink 
and fail. 

One of the most perplexing questions with which Mr. Lin- 
coln has had to deal in carrying on the war, has been that of 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 81 

slavery. There are two classes of persons who cannot, even 
now, see that there was any thing perplexing about it, or that 
he ought to have had a moment's hesitation how to treat it. 
One, is made up of those who regard the law of slavery as 
paramount to the Constitution, and the rights of slavery as 
the most sacred of all the rights which are guaranteed by that 
instrument : the other, of those who regard the abolition of 
slavery as the one thing to be secured, whatever else may be 
lost. The former denounce Mr. Lincoln for having interfered 
with slavery in any way, for any purpose, or at any time : the 
latter denounce him, with equal bitterness, for not having 
swept it out of existence the moment Fort Sumter was at- 
tacked. In this matter, as in all others, Mr. Lincoln has acted 
upon a fixed principle of his own, which he has applied to the 
practical conduct of affairs just as fast as the necessities of the 
case required and as the public sentiment would sustain him 
in doing. His policy has been from the outset a tentative 
one — as, indeed, all policies of government to be successful 
must always be. On the outbreak of the rebellion the first 
endeavor of the rebels was to secure the active co-operation of 
all the slaveholding States. Mr. Lincoln's first action, there- 
fore, was to withhold as many of these States from joining 
the rebel confederacy as possible. Every one can see now 
that this policy, denounced at the time by his more zealous 
anti-slavery supporters as temporizing and inadequate, pre- 
vented Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, Missouri, and part of 
Virginia from throwing their weight into the rebel scale ; and 
although it is very easy and very common to undervalue ser- 
vices to a cause after its triumph seems secure, there are few 
who will not concede that if these States had been driven or 
permitted to drift into the rebel confederacy, a successful ter- 
mination of the war would have been much farther off than it 
seems at present. Mr. Lincoln did every thing in his power, 
consistent with fidelity to the Constitution, to retain the Bor- 
der Slave States within the Union ; and the degree of success 



82 LIFE OP ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

which attended his efforts is the best proof of their wisdom. His 
treatment of the slavery question has been marked by the same 
policy. His letters explain the principles on which he was acting, 
show that he has been more anxious to take action which should 
be sustained by the country, and thus be permanently valuable, 
than to put forth any theory of his own or carry into effect the 
dogmas of any party. The whole case is stated with great clear- 
ness and force in the letter to Mr. Hodges, of Kentucky. 

An impression is quite common that great men, who make 
their mark upon the progress of events and the world's history, 
do it by impressing their own opinions upon nations and com- 
munities, in disregard of their sentiments and prejudices. 
History does not sustain this view of the case. No man ever 
moulded the destiny of a nation except by making the senti- 
ment of that nation his ally — by working with it, by shaping 
his measures and his policy to its successive developments. 
But little more than a year before the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence was issued, Washington wrote to a friend in England 
that the idea of separation from Great Britain was not enter- 
tained by any considerable number of the inhabitants of the 
colonies. If independence had then been proclaimed, it would 
not have been supported by public sentiment; and its procla- 
mation would have excited hostilities and promoted divisions 
which might have proved fatal to the cause. Time, — the de- 
velopment of events, — the ripening conviction of the necessity 
of such a measure, were indispensable as preliminary conditions 
of its success. And one of the greatest elements of Washing- 
ton's strength was the patient sagacity with which he could 
watch and wait until these conditions were fulfilled. The 
position and duty of President Lincoln in regard to Slavery 
have been very similar. If he had taken counsel only of his 
own abstract opinions and sympathies, and had proclaimed 
emancipation at the outset of the war, or had sanctioned the 
actioa of those department commanders who assumed to do it 



LIFE OF ABRAHAM: LINCOLN. 83 

themselves, the first effect would have been to throw all the 
Border Slave States into the bosom of the slaveholding con- 
federacy, and add their formidable force to the armies of the 
rebellion : the next result would have been to arouse the 
political opposition of the loyal States to fresh activity by 
giving them a rallying cry : and the third would have been to 
divide the great body of those who agreed in defending the 
Union, but who did not then agree in regard to the abolition 
of slavery. Candid men, who pay more regard to facts than 
to theory, and who can estimate with fairness the results of 
public action, will have no difficulty in seeing that the proba- 
ble result of these combined influences would have been such 
a strengthening of the forces of the Confederacy, and such a 
weakening of our own, as might have overwhelmed the Ad- 
ministration, and given the rebellion a final and a fatal triumph 
By awaiting the development of public sentiment, President 
Lincoln secured a support absolutely essential to success ; and 
there are few persons now, whatever may be their private 
opinions on slavery, who will not concede that his measures 
in regard to that subject have been adopted with sagacity and 
crowned with substantial success. 

"We may safely leave the merits of President Lincoln's adminis- 
tration to the judgment of the future. The full extent of favor 
which it is sure to receive from history cannot yet be estimated, for 
its policy is still in process of development. But if events shall 
keep on in the course whether they now seem to be tending, — if it 
is allowed to go on without interruption, — if the measures which 
President Lincoln has inaugurated for quelling the rebellion and 
restoring the Union, are permitted to work out their natural results, 
unchecked by popular impatience and sustained by public confi- 
dence, no measure will be too great, for they will end in re-estab- 
lishing the authority of the Constitution, in restoring the integrity 
of the Union, in abolishing every vestige of slavery, and in per- 
petuating the principles of democratic government upon this con- 
tineut and throughout the world. 



flORACB Greeley in the New York Tribune recommends the book asfoUows: 
" Mr. Henry J. Raymond has rendered the American public a real ser- 
vice by compiling a ' History of the Administration of President Lincoln, 
forming a neat octavo volume of 500 pages. Politicians of all classes wil< 
find the book exceedingly convenient for reference. It is, moreover, a well- 
arranged, readable, interesting book, which every one interested in our 
country's welfare may read with pleasure and profit. We bespeak for it 
a prompt and general circulation." 

MR. RAYMOND'S HISTORY 

OF THE 

ADMINISTRATION 

! 

OF 

PRESIDENT LINCOLN, 

INCLUDING HIS 

Speeches, Addresses, Letters, Messages, and Proclama- 
tions, with a preliminary Sketch of his Life. 

CONTENTS OF THE WORK. 

Pbbuminabt. — Sketch of the Life of Abraham Lincoln — His Political Career — De- 
bate with Douglas — Election to the Presidency. 

Chapter L — Condition of the Country at the time of the Election — Closing of Bu- 
chanan's Administration — Peace Congress — Incipient Steps of the Rebellion. 

Chapter II. — From Springfield to Washington — Mr. Lincoln's Speeches on the way 
— Conspiracy to Assassinate him — Arrival at "Washington. 

Chapter III.— From the Inauguration to the Meeting of Congress, July 4, 1S61— 
Action of the Border States. 

Chapter IV. — Extra Session of Congress, and the Military Events of the Summer 
of 1861. 

Ohapter V. — Eegular Session of Congress, December, 1S61 — Messages and Debates. 

Chapter VI.— The Military Administration of 1862— The President and Gen. Mc- 
Clellan, with a critical history of McClellan's Campaigns. 

Chapter VII. — Military Movements in other sections of the Country — Our Foreign 
Relations — Letters — The Emancipation Proclamations. 

Chapter VIII.— The Congressional Session of 1862-'63— Message of the President, 
and General Action of the Session. 

Chapter IX. — Military Arrests and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus — The Draft- 
New York Riots, &c. 

Chapter X. — The Session of 1863 — Message and Debates — The Elections. 

Chapter XI. — Movements of Reconstruction — The Missouri Question — Colonization 
— Employment of Negro Troops— General Review of the Policy and Character 
of the Administration. 

Appendix.— Containing interesting Letters and Documents never before published. 

It is confidently believed by the Publishers that this volume, prepared from art 
thorized and authentic data, and with the usual care and ability of its well v* H>WQ 
author, HENRY J. RAYMOND, Esq., Editor of the New York Tsjes, will not 
only prove > ery acceptable to the American public, but will also take its place at 
once as an 

IMPARTIAL, TRUTHFUL, AND STANDARD HISTORY 05 

PEESIDEKT LINCOLN'S ADMINISTEATION. 

In this work every Message, Proclamation, Speech, Letter, &c, of President Lin- 
coln is given, from official copy, each under its appropriate head. It is believed that 
every thing lie has said or written during his Administration, which has been given to 
the public, is included in this collection, in a form at once convenient and autuzn- 
fio. A copious Index adds to its value as a book of reference. 

One Volume, 12mo, with a Fine Steel Portrait. 

DERBY & MILLER. No. B Rpruce St., New York. 
%*x Agents Wanted in every town to sell the above. 
Copies sent by mail on receipt of price, $1.50. 



LIFE OF MDREW JOffifSOJT, OF TENNESSEE. 

BY JOHN SAVAGE. 

Andrew Johnson was born at Ealeigh, North Car- 
olina, on the 29th December, 1808. His father, a man 
in humble life, but of noble nature, dying from exhaus- 
tion, after having saved Col. Thomas Henderson, editor 
of the Ealeigh Gazette, from drowning, left his son an 
orphan, before he had completed his fifth year. The 
necessities of his parents prevented him from receiving 
even the rudiments of an English education ; and the 
sad event of his father's death did not accelerate any 
opportunity for educational culture. The energies of 
the child were needed for his own support, and a trade 
was the most reliable resource. He was accordingly 
apprenticed to a tailor, in his native town, and with him 
worked steadily until the term of his indentures ex- 
pired. Thus commenced the struggle of the future sen- 
ator and patriot in the battle of life, the very outset of 
his manly career indicating the energy and self-reliance 
which has so distinguished it, and which offer such 
hopeful examples to the great mass of our youth, who 
can only be nerved for the life-struggle by stout hearts 
and honest purposes. TVe next find young Johnson as 
a working journeyman— a love story, which his celeb- 
rity since has brought to light, tracing him to the vicinity 
of Lawrence Court House, South Carolina. Here, as 

(85) 



86 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

the storj goes, he fell in love with an estimable young 
lady, but he was a stranger, he was poor, he was young, 
not yet near out of his teens, and he passionately fled 
away from what to him seemed cold hearts, and the 
pitying smiles which his youthful sensitiveness could 
brook less patiently than open sneers. He returned to 
Raleigh in the Spring of 1826 ; and in the Fall of that 
year, accompanied by his mother and her husband, he 
bent his steps toward Greenville, Tennessee, where he 
stopped and counted his eighteenth year. His good 
star led him thither. 

In Greenville the youth found a wife who became his 
Egeria. In a work published in 1860, those days of 
Johnson, and the good effect produced by his wife on 
his future, are sketched. "What material for the ro- 
mancist might be found in the history of those days of 
the future senator, when his wife, fondly leaning by the 
side of the youth who was earning bread for her, taught 
him to read, and decked with the fair flowers of a 
healthy education the hitherto neglected garden of his 
brain! What a group! what a study! — the youth's 
fingers mechanically plying the needle, his brain alive, 
following the instructions of his wife-teacher, or with a 
bright, almost childish, satisfaction meeting her approval 
cf his correct answers ! After work-hours she taught 
him to write. What a living, ennobling romance was 
there -being enacted in the wilds of Tennessee thirty 
years ago ! But we must hurry over this chapter of our 
hero's history with a mere suggestive sentence. Young 
Johnson and his wife started ' out West to seek their 
fortune,' but at the earnest solicitation of a good friend 
he was induced to return. He worked at his trade 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 87 

with great industry and attention, extending, mean- 
while, the advantages which his capacity for knowledge 
presented.. The shop-board was the school where he 
received the rudiments of his education, which he after- 
wards, in leisure moments and in the deep silence of the 
midnight hours, applied to the attainment of a more 
perfect system. 

"The disadvantages of his position would have dis- 
couraged almost any other man, certainly with any 
other kind of a wife. But, cheered by his excellent 
companion and prompted by his own desire for self- 
improvement, young Johnson brought an energy to the 
difficulties before him which nothing could repress or 
conquer. It is not a matter of surprise that he was hos- 
tile to every proposition that would give power to the 
few at the expense of the many ; that his hard and yet 
bright experiences made him the exponent of the wants 
and power of the working class." He felt the force of 
the truth so eloquently expressed by another working- 
man, J. de Jean (Ffraser), one of the poets of the Irish 
movement of 1818 : 

"When, by tlx' almighty breath of God 

Each to its sphere was hurled — 
The living creature — and the clod — 

The atom — and the world — 
As trusted viceroy on the earth, 

To carry out the plan 
For which He gave that globe its birth, 

God formed the Working-man." 

Johnson soon gave voice to the feelings of the 
working-men in Greenville. He made them conscious 
of their strength and proud of it, in opposition to the 



88 LIFE OF ANDFvEW JOHNSON. 

aristocratic coterie which had until then ruled the com- 
munity, so that no man who worked for his livelihood 
could be elected even an Alderman. With the dawning 
vision of intellect and self-reliance he saw that all this 
was wrong, and he determined, with the aid of his 
fellow- workers, to right it. Meetings were held in every 
part of the town, and the result was the election of the 
young tailor to the office of Alderman by a triumphant 
majority. How proud the good wife must have felt ! 

His triumph over the aristocracy was ratified by sub- 
sequent re-elections and his being chosen Mayor of 
Greenville. Strengthened by success, through their 
ardent advocate, the working-men felt and assumed 
their power, and their antagonists, wearying of the con- 
test so gallantly conducted, admitted the representatives 
of the mechanics to their legitimate influence in the 
councils. Thus, in his onward career, Mr. Johnson 
illustrated the ennobling fact that energy and self- 
reliance are the surest means by which an aristocratic, 
idle and overbearing class are made to respect the 
claims, and fear the united action of the honest and up- 
right people who live by the sweat of their brows. 
Journalists, North and South, in the interest of spurious 
aristocracy, and disloyal speculators, sneeringly refer to 
Johnson's early life, as though in America it were a 
disgrace to live honestly, and assert one's independence 
in the noblest way it can be asserted, by contributing 
to the social and moral character of the community by 
industry and honest labor. These flippant apologists 
of idleness and aristocracy sneer at Mr. Johnson because 
he was born poor, and became not in his youth a bur- 
den on his neighbors ; and at the same time are vocif- 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 89 

erous in declaring they are the followers of Jefferson, 
who, in the Declaration of Independence, asserted the 
truth to be self-evident "that all men are created 
equal." 

As Madison said, in 1852, "It is remarkable how 
closely the Nullifiers (Secessionists), who make the 
name of Jefferson the pedestal for their colossal heresy, 
shut their eyes and lips whenever his authority is ever 
so clearly and emphatically against them." But we 
can scarcely expect the enemies of the Republic to be 
the friends of those who made the Republic great — the 
working-men. 

It was about this time — and before Johnson had 
fairly made his entree into the public arena — that the 
nullification controversy arose between the Federal Gov- 
ernment and the State of South Carolina, and it became 
necessary for Andrew Jackson, then President of the 
United States, to issue his proclamation, exhorting the 
South Carolinians to obey the law, and comply with the 
requirements of the Constitution. As he has since 
told us, in. the great debate in the Senate, Feb- 
ruary, 1861 — when he vindicated the action taken by 
him against the traitors on that floor in the month pre- 
vious* — Johnson then planted himself upon the princi- 
ples announced by General Jackson. He believed the 
positions then taken by the soldier of two wars for the 
independence of the United States were the true doc- 
trines of the Constitution, and the only doctrines upon 
which the Government could be preserved. From that 
period to the present he has been uniformly opposed to 
the doctrine of secession, or of nullification. He be- 
lieved it a heresy in 1833 — an element which, if main- 



90 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

tained, would result in the destruction of the Govern- 
ment. In 1860-61 he maintained the same doctrine, 
and, in so maintaining, flung himself boldly and hero- 
ically against the traitor phalanx on the floor of the 
Senate. 

The results of Mr. Johnson's reforms in Greenville 
were extensively felt in the community ; and his char- 
acter received commensurate testimony of approval in 
the offices bestowed upon him. The County Court 
elected him a Trustee of Rhea Academy, which office he 
held until he entered the State Legislature. Mr. John- 
son was active in securing the adoption of the new Con- 
stitution (1831), which greatly enlarged the liberties of 
the masses, and guarantied the freedom of speech and 
of the press. In 1835 Washington and Greene counties 
elected him to the Legislature, where he at once became 
prominent by opposing a vast scheme of so-called " in- 
ternal improvements," but which was carried into a law 
without the approbation of the people. So able an ad- 
vocate of the Homestead measure as Johnson, through 
conviction, always was, could not but be a friend to 
internal improvements ; but the law he so persistently 
opposed was, as he viewed it, only "a system of whole- 
sale fraud." Before its evil results were manifest, an 
election for the next Legislature took place, when he 
was defeated ; but his assertions in regard to it having 
been fulfilled, he was returned in 1839. 

In the Presidential campaign between Harrison and 
Van Buren, in 1810, Mr. Johnson's earnest power as a 
speaker recommended him as equal to the canvassing of 
Eastern Tennessee in favor of the Democratic candidate. 
In the following year, Hawkins and Greene counties sent 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 01 

him to the State Senate by a majority of two thousand, 
and he signalized his term by the introduction of judi- 
cious measures for internal improvements in the eastern 
division of the State. That these met the approval of 
the people is shown by the fact that, in 1843, they de- 
sired his services on a broader field, and nominated him 
for Congress from the First District, which embraced 
seven counties. His antagonist was a United States 
Bank Democrat, a man of eloquence and capacity, Col. 
John A. Asken. Johnson was elected, and taking his 
seat in the House of Representatives, in Washington, 
December, 1843, continued, by subsequent re-elections, 
to represent his district for ten years, during which pe- 
riod he distinguished himself in support of the bill re- 
funding the fine imposed on General Jackson ; the an- 
nexation of Texas ; the war measures of Polk's admin- 
istration ; and as an untiring, able, and conscientious 
advocate of the Homestead bill. But this period, his 
Congressional career in the lower house, cannot be 
passed over without some slight allusion to the details. 

Mr. Johnson made his debut in Congress as the defender 
of " Old Hickory," advocating in a brief but forcible 
argument the restoration of the fine imposed upon Gen- 
eral Jackson, for having placed New Orleans under 
martial law in 1814. He followed this up by a reply to 
John Quincy Adams on the right of petition, which was 
characterized as a highly creditable effort ; and by an 
argument on the Tariff, in which he declared it was a 
departure from the principles of equity to tax the many 
for the benefit of the few, under the plea of protecting 
American labor, as was done by the Tariff of 1842. He 
insisted upon it that, while Congress was consulting the 



92 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

interests of the manufacturer, it had no right to forget or 
neglect those of the agriculturalist, as high-protectionists 
were notoriously too apt to do, and replied to Mr. An- 
drew Stewart, of Pennsylvania, by a series of circumstan- 
tial details showing that so far as protection applies to 
protecting mechanics proper, there is no reality in it ; 
for if all are protected alike, the protection paralyzes 
itself, and results in no protection at all. "Protection 
operates," said he, " beneficially to none, except those 
who can manufacture in large quantities, and vend their 
manufactured articles beyond the limits of the immediate 
manufacturing sphere." 

At the second session of the Twenty-eighth Congress, 
Mr. Johnson warmly co-operated with the friends of 
Texan annexation, and on the 21st of January, 1845, 
delivered an able speech on the subject. One of the 
Ohio delegation having alluded to General Jackson in 
an uncalled-for manner, Mr. Johnson gallantly defended 
the character of Jackson, then living in retirement in 
the forests of Tennessee, from the unkind allusions, 
which seemed to him strange, coming from the quarter 
whence they had emanated. In the course of the ex- 
citing debate upon the annexation of Texas, Mr. Cling- 
man, of North Carolina, intimated that British gold had 
been used to carry the election of Polk. Mr. Johnson 
denounced the suggestion as a vile slander, without the 
shadow of a foundation, and called on the gentleman 
from North Carolina for his proof, relying on the fact 
that if there were no authority for the assertion, it was 
a slander. In the course of Mr. Clingman's remarks, 
he said that "had the foreign Catholics been divided in 
the late election, as other sects and classes generally were, 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOIIXSOX. 93 

Mr. Clay would have carried, by a large majority, the 
State of New York, as also the States of Pennsylvania, 
Louisiana, and probably some others in the northwest. 
There were but few Catholics in Mr. Johnson's district, 
and he was not called upon to do battle with the prej- 
udices that might or did exist against them; but he 
protested against the doctrine advanced by the Repre- 
sentative from North Carolina. He wished to know if 
Clingman desired to arouse a spirit of persecution ; to 
sweep away or divide all those who dared to differ from 
the Whig party. 

In advocating the annexation of Texas, and looking 
at the great capabilities of that country, he thought it 
probable that it would "prove to be the gateway out of 
which the sable sons of Africa are to pass from bondage 
to freedom and become merged in a population con- 
genial with themselves." The annexation would give 
the Union all the valuable cotton soil, or nearly so, 
upon the habitable globe. Cotton was destined to clothe 
more human beings than any other article that had ever 
been discovered. The factories of England would be 
compelled to stand still, were it not for cotton. With- 
out it, her operatives would starve in the street, and if 
this Government had the command of the raw material, 
it was the same as putting Great Britain under bonds to 
keep the peace for all time to come. He was willing — 
when he glanced at the historic page giving an account 
of their rise and progress, the privations they had un- 
dergone, the money and toil they had expended, the 
valor and patriotism they had displayed — to extend to 
the Texans the right hand of fellowship. 

In 1845 Mr. Johnson was re-elected. The Twenty- 



94 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

ninth Congress was for several reasons one of the most 
important in the political history of the country up to 
that time. Between the United States and Great Britain 
a bitter contention existed regarding the Oregon bound- 
ary line. Mr. Johnson took a decided stand in support 
of our right to the line of 54° 40', at the same time in- 
sisting that the real contest was for the territory between 
46° and 49°, as that embraced the Columbia Eiver, 
which Great Britain was anxious to acquire on account 
of the invaluable advantages it afforded for both mili- 
tary and commercial purposes. President Tyler had 
moreover offered to adjust the difficulty on the line of 
49°, and the proposition, as a matter of national con- 
sistency, had been renewed by President Polk. Hence, 
when the British officials, though at first having declined 
the offer, concluded to present that line to America for 
an adjustment, it would have appeared simply as a will- 
ful desire for war not to have received the proposition. 
To pursue a different course would, in the opinion of 
Mr. Johnson, be abandoning the substance, and running 
after the shadow ; he therefore sustained President Polk 
in his settlement of the question. 

In this session Mr. Johnson denounced the proposed 
contingent tax of ten per cent, on tea and coffee as une- 
qual in its bearings. He thought it unjust that the poor 
man should not only shed his blood in defense of the 
rights and honor of his country, but also be overbur- 
dened with taxes. Having aided in demolishing the 
proposed tax, he introduced and carried through a bill 
providing a tax, to a certain amount of per centage, 
upon all bank, State and Government stock, and other 
capital. He also, in the debate on the Eiver and Har- 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 95 

bor Improvement bill, took general grounds "against 
the insane policy of indiscriminate expenditure of public 
money for improvements of an entirely local nature." 

In the second session he supported with great ability 
the raising of men and money for the prosecution of the 
war with Mexico. 

In 1847 he was re-elected to Congress by an over- 
whelming majority. Among his efforts of this period 
is one which, apart from its political bearing, has a pe- 
culiar interest. It is an argument in favor of the veto 
power. He gave an historical outline of the veto power, 
which runs back to the times of the Roman Republic — 
the tribunes of the people having had the right to ap- 
prove or disapprove any law passed by the Senate, 
inscribing upon the parchment, in case they resolved to 
adopt the latter alternative, the word " veto." He 
traced this power, through the various stages of its 
progress, from the days of Augustus, and showed that 
since the establishment of this Government to the time 
at which he spoke, the veto power had been exercised 
twenty-five times, thus : by Washington, twice ; by Mad- 
ison, six times ; by Monroe, once ; by Jackson, nine 
times; by Tyler, four times; by Polk, thrice. During 
this session he continued his advocacy of the Mexican 
war, in opposition to those who denounced it as uncon- 
stitutional and unjust. 

True to the welfare of the people from whom he 
sprung, Mr. Johnson was the prime mover in Congress 
of the Homestead bill, to give every man who is head 
of a family and a citizen of the United States, a home- 
stead of one hundred and sixty acres of land out of the 
public domain, upon the condition that he should oc 



96 LIFE OF ANDKEW JOHXSON". 

cupy and cultivate the same for five years. As early as 
1847 he commenced the agitation of this question and 
has been the forcible and untiring advocate of it, not 
only in the Capitol, but everywhere and on every 
occasion. 

During his Congressional career in the lower House, 
Johnson labored as few men have ever labored to im- 
prove the condition of the people. It seemed to be his 
mission to make labor respected, and to make its rewards 
respectable. 

It was predicted when Johnson came to "Washington 
that his ultra notions would bury him fathoms deep, and 
that he would return to Tennessee only to pray upon a 
broken heart. But, as Forney said, " any one who gazed 
into his dark eyes, and perused his pale face, would 
have seen there an unquenchable spirit and an almost 
fanatical obstinacy that spoke another language." John- 
son can look back on those years of his Congressional 
career as given to the service of his country and hu- 
manity. 

In 1853 Mr. Johnson was elected Governor of Ten- 
nessee over Gustavus A. Henry, one of the ablest Whigs 
in the State ; and, in that position, exhibited such per- 
sonal and official integrity, such impartiality and devo- 
tion to the people's interests, that he was re-elected in 
1855, after an active canvass, over another and equally 
able Whig, Meredith P. Gentry. 

At the close of this gubernatorial term in 1857, Gov- 
ernor Johnson was chosen United States Senator for the 
full term, ending March 3, 1863. 

With the occasion, Governor Johnson's devotion to 
the rights of the people rose above all sectionalities. In 



LIFE OP ANDREW JOIINSON. 97 

1855 lie made a very able speech at Murfrcesboro', 
Term., against "Know-Nothingism ;*' and in his own clear 
and earnest way, turned the arguments by which the 
persecution was sought to be upheld against the perse- 
cutors themselves. In the course of this speech he said : 
" The Know-Nothings were opposed to the Catholic 
religion because it was of foreign origin, and many of 
its members in this country were foreigners also. He 
said that if it was a valid objection to tolerating the 
Catholic religion in this country because it was of foreign 
origin and many of its members were foreigners, we 
would be compelled to expel most of the other religions 
of the country for the same reason. Who, he asked, 
was John Wesley, and where did the Methodist religion 
have its origin? It was in old England, and John 
Wesley was an Englishman. But, if John Wesley were 
alive to-day and here in this country, Know-Nothingism 
would drive him and his religion back to England 
whence they came, because they were foreign. Who, 
he asked, was John Calvin, and where did Calvinism 
take its rise? Was it not Geneva? And were Calvin 
alive, this new order would send him and his doctrines 
back whence they came. Who, he asked, was Roger 
Williams? And would not Roger Williams and the 
Baptists share the same fate ? And so with Martin Lu- 
ther, the great Reformer ; he would have been subjected 
to the same proscriptive test." 

In the Thirty-fifth Congress, Senator Johnson was 
prominent in the advocacy of his favorite project, the 
Homestead bill, and on other leading domestic and 
financial questions of the day. He offered a substitute 
for the Army bill, protesting against standing armies 



98 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

and the increase of the Army as advocated by Jeff. Davis. 
He did not believe the time warranted any permanent 
addition to the military establishment, and warned the 
Democracy of the danger to which their political ascen- 
dancy would be exposed by a persistence in the path of 
extravagance. He did not think Congress had a con- 
stitutional rio;ht to construct a railroad to the Pacific. 
He thought it should be left to private enterprise. In 
the same speech, 25th of January, 1859, Senator John- 
son, reviewing the political aspects of the times, beheld, 
as he thought, a serious departure from the maxims of 
the Constitution and wise precepts of the fathers and 
founders of the Republic. In this degeneracy the Dem- 
ocratic party had shared, and he could not recognize the 
right of its Presidential Conventions to expound period- 
ically, beyond all appeal, the tenets which constitutes a 
true Democrat. 

On the slavery question, Senator Johnson held to the 
dogmas as then received by the party with which he 
generally acted, but it was not an institution superior to 
all others, or on which he would sacrifice the integrity 
of the Republic. In 1850, during a discussion on a se- 
ries of resolutions — introduced by himself — substantially 
similar to the Compromise measures, he gave expres- 
sion to his faith in the necessity of the supremacy of the 
Union, trusting " that Whigs and Democrats, the reflect- 
ing and patriotic of all sides, would, in view of the 
amount of public prosperity, tranquillity and happiness, 
as well as the great value of property involved in the 
adjustment of the pending difficulties, feel that the pres- 
ervation of the Union was paramount to all other con- 
siderations." 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 99 

To this sentiment, uttered in the equable but earnest 
tones of advice from one who, even much later, in the 
unsuspecting honesty of his own patriotism, believed the 
Union not in danger, Senator Johnson has stood with 
a boldness and a heroism equal in every respect to the 
contingencies involved in it. For years after the adop- 
tion of the Compromise measures, as late as January, 
1859, he declared ho " was not one of those who sang 
peans in its praise, because he was not one of those who 
believed that the Union had ever yet been, and was not 
likely ever to be, in any danger." He judged of others 
by the faith in his own head and heart. Knowing that 
the compact could not be legally broken by the band 
of disquiet and ambitious politicians who were in the 
habit of bewildering their auditors and themselves with 
metaphysical theories on States' Eights, and periodically 
threatening to invoke the " (rod of battles," he could 
not, would not, allow himself to believe that, by per- 
sistent audacity and artifice, subdivisions of party could 
be so effected as to produce the desired contingency ; 
and that even the high places of the Government could 
become so inoculated with infamy as to turn popular 
trust into parricidal treason. 

. His faith in the Union was too great, his pride in the 
bounty of its institutions, under which men like himself 
had risen to eminence, too glorious to comprehend how 
a hand could be raised against it. This very faith and 
pride, however, but made him the stronger to face the 
crisis when it broke upon him in all its terrible reality. 
If he sang no peans to it when he believed it safe, he 
was inspired with a resolute frenzy when he beheld it 
in danger. His clear, logical and patriotic periods 



100 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

struck consternation into the ranks of the traitors, and 
their boldest advocates and sympathizers sprang forward 
to grapple with him, striving to attain, by passionate 
sectional appeals and personal denunciations of him as a 
traitor to the South, that power over him which they 
could not achieve by argument. But they miserably 
failed. The fact that Senator Johnson had acted with 
the Breckinridge wing of the Democracy in the previous 
Presidential campaign but made him the more fierce, 
seeing that the Breckinridge leaders had used the 
occasion to foment the slaveholders' rebellion. Although 
he sympathized with Douglas, Senator Johnson had 
supported Breckinridge in all honesty, believing that 
his constituents in Tennessee desired such action, and 
that in it lay the best chances of uniting the Democratic 
party. He was not in the confidence of the conspirators, 
and could not know that it was their pufpose to have 
the Democratic party defeated, so that a plea, however 
remote and unjust, might be furnished to the Yanceyites 
for carrying out their long projected plan of precipitat- 
ing the cotton States into revolution. Many Union 
Southern men were whirled into the rebel ranks or 
cowed into disloyal inaction, by the public and private 
lacerations they were subjected to by the organized sys- 
tem of brow-beating pursued by the ultra Southerners. 
But Johnson was of different stuff. He was not to be 
awed by any innuendoes of physical coercion, or hushed 
by any display of verbal ferocity. 

The debates in which he tore asunder all the pleas 
upon which his late coadjutors sought to dissever the 
Union are famous, and cannot be too often perused. 
They are singularly able, and the interest attached to 



LIFE OF ANDBEW JOHNSON. - 101 

their views increases into heroism when we remember 
the place and time, the occasion upon which he spoke, 
the grandeur of the subject and the character of the men 
by whom he was surrounded. 

It was on the 18th and 19th of December, 1860, that 
Senator Johnson, convinced of the extremities about to 
be pursued by the traitors, took open ground against 
them in a speech of great and defiant power. It flung 
consternation and dismay into the ranks of secession, 
and struck a chord in the popular heart throbbing anx- 
iously in the galleries, that several times proved to be 
irrepressible. This speech, as the grand opening effort 
of a Southern patriot against Southern treason, forms a 
great historical point not only in the career of the orator, 
but of his country at its most intense epoch. Among 
the propositions laid before the Senate for the adjust- 
ment of difficulties during the second session of the 
Thirty-sixth Congress, were three amendments to the 
Constitution by Senator Johnson. One proposed to 
change the mode of election of President and Vice- 
President of the United States from the electoral college 
to a vote substantially and directly by the people. The 
second proposed that the Senators of the United States 
shall be elected by the people once in six years, instead 
of by the Legislatures of the respective States. The 
third provided that the Supreme Court shall be divided 
into three classes: the term of the first class is to expire 
in four years from the time that the classification is 
made, of the second class in eight years, and of the third 
class in twelve years; and as these vacancies occur they 
are to be filled by persons chosen — one-half from the 
slave States, and the other half from the non-slavehold- 



102 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

ing States, thereby taking the judges of the Supreme 
Court, so far as their selection goes, from the respective 
divisions of the country; also, that either the President 
or Vice-President at each election shall be from the 
slaveholding States. 

By these means the Senator from Tennessee professed 
to equalize matters so that the South could not possibly 
object if it honestly meant to remain in the Union. If 
th^ South did not willfully and wantonly mean to disrupt 
the Union, its representatives could support his propo- 
sition. To give at length the great speech of this occa- 
sion is beyond the capacity of this publication, but to 
pass it over would be unjust. From the Washington 
States and Union of the following days a resume of the 
points is mainly taken. 

Senator Johnson was opposed to secession, and was 
in favor of maintaining the rights of the South within 
the Union. Neither he nor his State would be driven 
out of it. Tennessee denied the doctrine of secession, 
and as for himself he meant to hold on to the Union 
and the guarantees of the Constitution. Taking these 
grounds on the 18th, Johnson and his speech made the 
topics of conversation that night in the fermenting and 
excitable circles then congregated at Washington. Great 
delight was expressed by the Unionists, unmeasured 
bitterness by the disunionists, and a widening interest in 
the next day's debate was betrayed by all. On the 19th, 
Senator Johnson resumed. 

His line of argument was to show that a State could 
not, of its own volition, withdraw from the compact. 
He read from Mr. Madison's letters to Mr.Triste and Mr. 
Webster, showing that such was his position. The 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHXSON. 103 

States delegated powers named in the Constitution, and 
Congress could enforce them ; but in doing so it did not 
become the oppressor. The State which resisted them 
became the aggressor. Bat when the Federal Govern- 
ment failed to carry out these powers, it ceased to be a 
government. He quoted Jackson, "Webster, Justice 
Marshall, and others, to show that a State had not a con- 
stitutional right to secede from the Union without the 
consent of all the States. The Constitution was intended 
to be perpetual, and to that end provision was made for 
its own amendment, its improvement and its contin- 
uance. 

It was also submitted to the States for ratification, 
and power given to Congress to admit new States. So 
we had in tee Constitution : first, the means of creating a 
Government; second, a means of perpetuating it; and 
third, the power to enlarge it. But were provisions 
found there for wunding up the Government, except by 
the inherent principle of all the States — not a State — 
but all the States, which spoke the Government into ex- 
istence and had a right to dissolve it? 

He cited the case of the Excise law of 1795 during the 
rebellion in Pennsylvania, when Gen. Washington was 
the President, and when he enforced the laws and put 
down the rebellion with a militia force of 15,000 men — 
the constitutional army. He quoted from Gen. Wash- 
ington's views on that rebellion, showing that he had 
the right to enforce the laws of the United States, and 
that he regarded the Union as inseparable. What was 
the difference, then, between the Federal Government 
enforcing its laws in a part or the whole of a State ? 
"Was it not as competent for Gen. "Washington to enforce 



104 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

the Excise laws against the whole of Pennsylvania as a 
part? 

Senator Johnson proceeded to review the Nullification 
laws of 1832, and cited the opinion of Gen. Jackson at that 
time, who, as President of the United States, was bound 
by his oath to see, and did see, that the laws were faithfully 
executed. He would have used an armed force for that 
purpose had the time arrived for its necessity. Gen. Jack- 
son acted just as Gen. "Washington did in a similar case. 

As to the present case, he would inquire if the Federal 
Government had not the power to enforce its laws in 
South Carolina as much as it had in Pennsylvania, Ver- 
mont, or in any other State ? He thought it had ; and 
notwithstanding the ordinance of secession which South 
Carolina might pass, it did not relieve her from her 
obedience to the United States, or from the compact 
which she entered 'into. The compact was reciprocal. 
If South Carolina drove the Courts of the United States 
out of the State, the Federal Government had the right 
to reinstate them there. If the State resisted the pas- 
sage of the mails, the Government could insist on their 
protection, and so with the collection of the revenue. 
If that State captured the forts of the United States, 
the Federal Government had the right to re-take them. 
If that State did all of these she was clearly in the 
wrong, and it was the duty of the Federal Government 
to see that the laws were faithfully executed. If the 
States expelling the Federal Courts and the mails did 
not commit treason, he would ask, in the name of the 
Constitution of the United States, what was treason ? 
It was treason, and nothing -but treason ; and if one 
State can do this, there is no government. 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 105 

Madison, Jefferson, Webster and Washington bad 
denounced Ibis doctrine : and if South Carolina set up 
a government for herself, and made an alliance with 
European powers, and had interests inimical to our own, 
she could be conquered by this Government and held as 
a province. [Hisses and applause.] There is a statute of 
Congress which declares that the General Government 
looks with suspicion and disfavor on the acquisition of 
any territory within the limits of the United States by 
any foreign power. Yet if a State secede she becomes 
a foreign power within our borders. 

He proceeded to cite the cost to the Federal Govern- 
ment of the new States, some of which desired to 
secede. Florida, which cost the United States millions 
of dollars in her purchase and in the driving out of the 
Indians, now threatens to withdraw from the United 
States and leave nothing for all this wealth which had 
been expended on her. Again, before Florida and 
Louisiana became States they were territories of* the 
United States, and if they withdrew from the Union, 
what condition would they assume on such withdrawal? 
Would they be States out of the Union, or would they 
be merely Territories, as before their admission. He 
continued to argue that all the States had acquired terri- 
tory, not alone for the benefit of the new States, but for 
the benefit of all the States. No State so acquired 
could by secession rob them of the benefits so acquired. 
Could Louisiana take out of the Union the mouth of 
the Mississippi ? 

He regarded the position assumed by South Carolina 
towards the border States as tending to extinguish 
slavery. He believed the quickest way to abolish slavery 



106 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

was to dissolve the Government. Mr. Lincoln's election 
as a plea for secession, he met with characteristic truth 
and manliness. 

" Why should we retreat? Because Mr. Lincoln has 
been elected President of the United States ? Is this 
any cause why we should retreat ? Does not every man, 
Senator or otherwise, know that if Mr. Breckinridge 
had been elected, we should not be to-day for dissolving 
the Union! Then what is the issue? It is because we 
have not got our man. If we had got our man we 
should not have been for breaking up the Union ; but 
as Mr. Lincoln is elected, we are for breaking up the 
Union ! I say, No. Let us show ourselves men, and 
men of courage. 

" How has Mr. Lincoln been elected, and how have Mr. 
Breckinridge and Mr. Douglas been defeated ? By the 
votes of the American people, cast according to the Con- 
stitution and the forms of law, though it has been upon 
a sectional issue. It is not the first time in our history 
that two candidates have been elected from the same 
section of country. General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun 
were elected on the same ticket ; but nobody considered 
that cause of dissolution. They were both from the 
South. I opposed the sectional spirit that has produced 
the election of Lincoln and Hamlin, yet it has been done 
according to the Constitution, and in accordance to the 
forms of law. I believe we have the power in our own 
hands, and I am not willing to shrink from the respon- 
sibility of exercising that power." 

Senator Johnson proceeded at length to cite extracts 
from Southern journals, showing that the writers favored 
a monarchical government. He thought, however, that 



LIFE OF ANDEEW JOHNSON. 107 

the South, before it left this Government, had better well 
consider what they were going to enter into. If 
there were evils, had we not, (addressing the South,) 
" better bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we 
know not of?" He intended to stand by, and act in and 
under the Constitution. The violators of the ordi- 
nances of this constitutional house should not drive him, 
out. In conclusion, the Senator thus declared his deter- 
mination : 

" In saying what I have said on this occasion, Mr. 
President, I have done it in view of a duty that I felt I 
owed to my constituents ; to my children ; to myself. 
Without regard to consequences, I have taken my 
position ; and when the tug comes, when Greek shall 
meet Greek, and our rights are refused after all honor 
able means have been exhausted, then it is that I will 
perish in the last breach ; yes, in the language of the 
patriot Emmet, ' I will dispute every inch of ground ; 
I will burn every blade of grass ; and the last entrench- 
ment of freedom shall be my grave.' Then, let us stand 
by the Constitution ; and, in preserving the Constitution, 
we shall save the Union ; and, in saving the Union, we 
save this, the greatest Government on earth." 

It was aptly remarked at the time, that Mr. Johnson's 
antecedents made him listened to with respect by many 
classes. He was recommended to the attention of the 
Republicans on account of his earnest advocacy in favor 
of opening the public lands to honest settlement ; to the 
Breckinridge men, because he supported their candidate 
in the Presidency ; and to Douglas men, because he 
agreed with the great Senator from Illinois on the doc- 
trine of non-intervention. In addition to which, said 



108 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

Mr. Forney, in a letter to the Press, " one of his main 
claims to public attention is founded on the fact that he 
was a most courageous and constant defender of the 
rights of adopted citizens in the perilous times of 1854: 
and 'do." 

If this Senatorial outburst had come from a Northern 
Democrat, it would have fallen with comparatively small 
effect upon the Southern men; but that a Southern Demo- 
crat, that Southern Democrat a Senator, who had sus- 
tained Breckinridge, should hurl such thunderbolts 
about tHeir heads, was unendurable. No higher tribute 
could be paid to the effect of Johnson's speech than the 
rapacity with which he was assailed by the sentinels of 
treason in the Senate. The debates continued through- 
out January, 1S61, and early in February Senator John- 
son replied to the acrimonious assaults, the sneering in- 
terruptions, the pointed ridicule, and the unmanly innuen- 
does which were leveled at him. His reply was elabo- 
rate and dignified. In it he more completely and effect- 
ually drove home the historical facts and logical con- 
clusions of his previous effort. In making that speech 
his intention — and he thought he succeeded in it — was 
to place himself upon the principles of the Constitution 
and the doctrines inculcated by Washington, Jefferson, 
Madison, Monroe, and Jackson. Having examined the 
positions of those distinguished fathers of the Republic, 
and compared them with the Constitution, he came to 
the conclusion that they Were right. Upon them he 
planted himself. These views inspired him. 

As he was the first man South of Mason and Dixon's 
line who, in the Senate, protested against the political 
heresy of secession, he would continue so to do, not- 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 109 

withstanding the denunciations he had met with. " From 
what I saw here," he said, " on the evening when I con- 
cluded my speech — although some may have thought 
that it intimidated and discouraged me — I was inspired 
with confidence ; I felt that I had struck treason a blow. 
I thought then, and I know now, that men who- were 
engaged in treason felt the blows that I dealt out on that 
occasion. As I have been made the peculiar object of 
attack, not only in the Senate, but out of the Senate, 
my object on this occasion is to meet some of these 
attacks, and to say some things in addition to what 
I then said against this movement." 

He took up the leading Senators who had directly, or 
by innuendo, attacked him. We shall see with what ad- 
mirable nonchalance and pith he disposed of them. After 
rep^ing to the views of Judah P. Benjamin, a notori- 
ously able and heartless traitor, who, with his less able 
but equally remorseless colleague, Slidell, had taken 
leave of the Senate on the day previous, he compared 
the theatrically sad tone of Benjamin's valedictory with 
some quite recent remarks from the same source. 

" I thought the scene was pretty well got up, and was 
acted out admirably. The plot was executed to the 
very letter. You would have thought that his people 
in Louisiana were borne down and seriously oppressed 
by remaining in this Union of States. Now, I have an 
extract before me, from a speech delivered by that gen- 
tleman since the election of Abraham Lincoln, while the 
distinguished Senator was on the western slope of the 
Rocky Mountains, at the city of San Francisco. In 
that speech, after the Senator had spoken some time 
with his accustomed eloquence, he uttered this language ; 



110 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

" ' Those who prate of, and strive to dissolve this glori- 
ous confederacy of States, are like those silly savages 
who let fly their arrows at the sun in the vain hope of 
piercing it ! And still the sun rolls on, unheeding, in 
its eternal pathway, shedding light and animation upon 
all the world.' 

" Even after Lincoln was elected, the Senator from. 
Louisiana is reported to have said, in the State of Cali- 
fornia, and in the city of San Francisco, that this great 
Union could not be destroyed. Those great and in- 
tolerable oppressions, of which we have since heard 
from him, did not seem to be flitting across his vision 
and playing upon his mind with that vividness and 
clearness which were displayed here yesterday. He 
said, in California, that this great Union would go on in 
its course, notwithstanding the puny efforts of the silly 
savages that were letting fly their arrows with the pros- 
pect of piercing it. What has changed the Senator's 
mind on coming from that side of the continent to this? 
What light has broken in upon him? Has he been 
struck on his way, like Paul, when he was journeying 
from Tarsus to Damascus? Has some supernatural 
power disclosed to him that his State and his people 
will be ruined if they remain in the Union?" 

In like manner he nullified Benjamin's picture of the 
horrors to be expected at President Lincoln's hands ; by 
quoting from Benjamin's speech of May, 1860, in which 
he said, " I must say here — for I must be just to all— * 
that I have been surprised in the examination that I 
made again, within the last few days, of this discussion 
between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas, to find that on 
several points Mr. Lincoln is a far more conservative 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOnXSOX. Ill 

man, unless he has since changed his opinion, than I 
supposed him to be." 

" Since that speech was made," added Johnson, "wince 
the Senator has traversed from California to this point, 
the grievances, the oppressions of Louisiana, have be- 
come so great that she is justified in going out of the 
Union, taking into her possession the custom-house, the 
mint, the navigation of the Mississippi river, the forts, 
and arsenals. Where are we ? ' O, consistency, thou 
art a jewel, much to be admired, but rarely to be found.' " 

As to Senator Joe Lane's attacking him, it was some- 
thing he could scarcely understand. In his speech of 
the 19th of December, he did not mean to say any thing 
offensive to the Senator from Oregon. He felt that he 
had just come out of a campaign in which he had 
labored hard, and expended money and time in vin- 
dicating Lane and Breckinridge from the charge of 
favoring secession and disunion. 

" Through the dust and heat, through the mud and 
rain, I traversed my State, meeting the charge of the 
opposition that secession was at the bottom of this move- 
ment ; that there was a fixed design and plan to break 
up this Government ; that it started at Charleston, and 
was consummated at Baltimore ; and the charge was 
made that my worthy friend — if I may be permitted to 
call him such ; I thought I was his friend then — was 
the embodiment of disunion and secession. I met the 
charge. I denied it. I repudiated it. I tried to con- 
vince the people — and I think I did succeed in con- 
vincing some of them — that the charge was untrue ; 
and that he and Mr. Breckinridge were the two best 
Union men in the country." 



112 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

After this bit of satire — which struck home, and only 
provoked a more personal attack from General Lane, just 
previous to the expiration of his term in the following 
month — Senator Johnson came directly to the miscon- 
struction placed upon his former words. " Why," he 
asks, "answer positions I did not assume, or attribute 
to me language I did not use ? Was it in the speech ? 
No ! Why, then, use language and assign a position to 
me which, if not intended, was calculated to make a 
false impression ? What called it forth ? What reason 
was there for it? I saw the consternation which 
was created. I- looked at some of their faces. I knew 
that I had stirred up animosity, and it was important 
that somebody from another quarter should make the 
attack. If the attack had been upon what I said or 
upon the position I had assumed, I should have no 
cause to complain ; and I do not complain now. Sir, 
though not very old, I have lived down some men. I 
have survived many misrepresentations. I feel that I 
have a conscience and a heart that will lead me to do it 
again. But when I had said nothing, when I had done 
nothing, to be struck at by him whom I had vindicated, 
I might well exclaim, ' That was the unkindest cut of 
all.' " 

The next Senator in order who made an attack upon 
Johnson was Jefferson Davis, who took occasion to do 
so in making his valedictory address to the Senate after 
Mississippi had passed the ordinance of secession. 

" It has been the case," said Johnson, u not only with 
that Senator, (Davis,) but with others, that an attempt 
has been made by innuendo, by indirection, by some 
side remark, to convey the impression that a certain 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 113 

man has a tendency or bearing towards Black Republi- 
canism or Abolitionism. Sometimes gentlemen who 
cannot establish such a charge are yet willing to make 
it, not directly, but by innuendo ; to create a false im- 
pression on the public mind — 

"Willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike." 

If the charge can be successfully made, why not make 
it directly, instead of conveying it by innuendo ? The 
Senator from Mississippi did not attempt to reply to my 
speech, did not answer my arguments, did not meet my 
authorities, did not controvert my facts." 

He showed that Davis was one of the forty-three 
Senators who, in the May previous, voted that it was 
not necessary to pass a law to protect slavery in thf 
Territories, and he asked what rights had South Carolina 
or the other seceding States lost since the last session, 
when that vote was recorded. It was wholly unneces- 
sary then ; but they will secede if its not granted now. 
To that same proposition, Senator Brown of Mississippi 
offered a very stringent amendment for the purpose of 
protecting slave property, and supported it by argu- 
ment. What was the vote upon that? "How does it 
stand?" asks Johnson: 

" We find," he says, in continuation, "after an argu- 
ment being made by Mr. Brown, showing that the neces- 
sity did exist, according to his argument, the vote upon 
the proposition stood thus : The question being taken by 
yeas and nays, it was determined in the negative — yeas, 
3 ; nays, 42. 

" Forty-two Senators voted that you did not need pro- 
tection ; that slavery was not in danger. 



114 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

" ' The yeas and nays being desired by one-fifth of the 
Senators present, 

"'Those who voted in the affirmative are: Messrs 
Brown, Johnson of Arkansas, Mallory.' 

" There were only three. Who said it was not neces- 
sary ? Who declared, under the solemn sanction of an 
oath, that protection was not needed ? " ' Those who 
voted in the negative are : Messrs. Benjamin,' — 

" Ah ! Yes, Benjamin ! — 

" ' Bigler, Bragg, Bright, Chestnut, Clark, Clay, Cling- 
man, Crittenden, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Fitzpatrick, 
Foot, Foster, Green, Grimes, Gwin, Hamlin, Harlan, 
Hemphill, Hunter' — 

" Hunter of Virginia, also I 

" 'Iverson, Johnson of Tennessee, Lane.' 

" Ah ! [Laughter.] Yes, Lane of Oregon, voted on 
the 25th of last May, that slavery did not need protec- 
tion in the Territories. Now he will get up and tell the 
American people and the Senate that he is for a State 
seceding, and for breaking up the Government, because 
they cannot get what he swore they did not need. 
[Laughter.] That is what I call putting the nail 
through." [Laughter in the galleries.] 

In this debate there occurs two sketches of character, 
both of which we know from history to be truthful. 
Besides the striking individuality of each, the powerful 
contrast between them carries with it a lesson as sugges- 
tive. In reply to a sneering allusion from Jeff. Davis, 
Johnson, exhibiting the trusting and trustful confidence 
mutually existing between himself and the people of 
Tennessee, gives us a firmly drawn outline of his nature 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 115 

and career, his past fortune, his present fortitude, and 
his faith for the future : 

" Thank God, there is too much good sense and intel- 
ligence in the country to put down any man by an in- 
nuendo or side remark like that. But, sir, so far as 
the people whom I have the honor in part to represent 
are concerned, I stand above the innuendoes of that 
kind. They have known me from my boyhood up. 
They understand my doctrines and my principles, in 
private and in public life. They have tried me in every 
position in which it was in their power to place a public 
servant, and they, to-day, will not say that Andrew 
Johnson ever deceived or betrayed them. In a public 
life of twenty-five years, they have never deserted or 
betrayed me ; and, God willing, I will never desert or 
betray them. The great mass of the people of Tennes- 
see know that I am for them ; they know that I have 
advocated those great principles and doctrines upon 
which the perpetuity of this Government depends ; they 
know that I have periled my all, pecuniarily and phys- 
ically, in vindication of their rights and their interests. 
Little innuendoes,' thrown off in snarling moods, fall 
harmless at my feet." 

The other sketch is of Jeff. Davis, the terrible depth 
of whose treason is made all the more crushing in the 
free aknowledgment of the education conferred by, and 
the honors won in the service of the United States: 

" When I consider his early education ; when I look at 
his gallant services, finding him first in the military 
school of the United States, educated by his Government, 
taught the science of war at the expense of his country 
— taught to love the principles of the Constitution ; 



116 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

afterward entering its service, fighting beneath the ' stars 
and stripes ' to which he has so handsomely alluded, win- 
ning laurels that are green and imperishable, and bear- 
ing upon his person scars, that are honorable; some of 
which have been won at home ; others of which have 
been won in a foreign clime, and upon other fields, I 
would be the last man to pluck a feather from his cap 
or a single gem from the chaplet that encircles his brow. 
But when I consider his early associations ; when I re- 
member that he was nurtured by this Government ; that 
he fought for this Government; that he won honors 
under the flag of this Government, I cannot understand 
how he can be willing to hail another banner, and turn 
from that of his country, under which he has won lau- - 
rels and received honors. This is a matter of taste, how- 
ever ; but it seems to me that, if I could not unsheath 
my sword in vindication of the flag of my country, its 
glorious 'stars and stripes,' I would return the sword to 
its scabbard ; I would never sheathe it in the bosom of 
my mother ; never! never!" 

The closing scene of the debate was one to be long 
remembered, and Johnson, briefly but powerfully reply- 
ing to Lane, exclaimed : 

" I will now present a fair issue, and hope it will be 
fairly met. Show me who has been engaged in these 
conspiracies ; show me who has been engaged in these 
nightly and secret conclaves plotting the overthrow of 
the Government ; show me who has fired upon our flag, 
has given instructions to take our forts and our custom- 
houses, our arsenals, and our dock-yards, and I will show 
you a traitor ! " [Applause in the galleries.] 

The Presiding Officer (Mr. Polk in the chair) : " The 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 117 

Sergeant-at-Arms will clear the galleries, on the right of 
the Chair, immediately." 

Mr. Johnson of Tennessee : " That is a fair proposi- 
tion " 

The Presiding Officer : " The Senator from Tennessee 
will pause until the order of the Chair is-executed." 

( Here a long debate ensued upon questions of order, 
and the propriety of clearing the galleries.) 

Mr. Johnson of Tennessee: " I hope the execution of 
the order will be suspended, and I will go security for 
the gallery that they will not applaud any more. I 
should have been nearly through my remarks by this 
time but for this interruption." 

The presiding officer here announced that the order 
for clearing the galleries would be suspended. 

Mr. Johnson of Tennessee: "Mr. President, when I 
was interrupted by a motion to clear the galleries, I was 
making a general allusion to treason as defined in the 
Constitution of the" United States, and to those who 
were traitors and guilty of treason within the scope and 
meaning of the law and the Constitution. My proposi- 
tion was, that if they would show me who were guilty 
of the offenses I have enumerated, I would show them 
who were the traitors. That being done, were I the 
President of the United States, I would do as Thomas 
Jefferson did in 1806 with Aaron Burr, who was charged 
with treason. I would have them arrested and tried for 
treason, and, if convicted, by the Eternal God, they 
should suffer the penalty of the law at the hands of the 
executioner." 

Order was several times invaded by the enthusiasm 
evoked by the patriotism of the speaker, and as he sat 



118 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

down a scene took place which is thus recorded by the 
National Intelligencer of March 4, 1861 : 

" As Mr. Johnson sat down, the spectators in the 
densely crowded galleries rose in order to leave, when, 
after the lapse of a few seconds, a faint cheer, followed 
by the clapping of a single pair of hands, was raised in 
the southern corner of the ladies' galley. This was 
hesitatingly imitated by two or three persons further on 
in the south range of the same gallery, but instantane- 
ously gathering strength, it lighted up the enthusiasm 
of the packed galleries in the west and northwest quar- 
ters, and a tremendous outburst of applause, putting to 
silence the powerful blows from the hammer of the 
presiding officer, succeeded. Three cheers were given 
for the Union, and three for Andrew Johnson of Ten- 
nessee; and as by this time the Senators on the floor 
gave the strongest token of indignation and outraged 
dignity, the retreating crowd uttered a shower of hisses. 
Altogether, the exhibition was the most vociferous and 
unrepressed that has ever taken place in the galleries of 
either House of Congress." 

The tone of these speeches, of course, drew upon the 
speaker all the ire of the secessionists, and many efforts 
were made in the South to show that Johnson had no 
sympath^y in that region. He however fearlessly pro- 
ceeded homeward. Passing through Lynchburg a large 
crowd assembled, groaned and hissed at him, and were, 
it is said, for going to greater extremities with him at 
Liberty, Ya. At other places he suffered indignities 
from the dismal, and some papers in Tennessee, under 
traitor control, regarded the expectations that Andrew 
Johnson would make his appearance at the head of a 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 119 

Union "Lincoln force "as a delusion. Johnson, how- 
ever, was not to be deterred. At Cincinnati, in June, at 
the East Tennessee Union Convention, and again in the 
Senate, in the extra session, succeeding the inauguration 
of Mr. Lincoln — at all places where it was necessary, 
his clarion tones proclaimed the glory of the Union 
cause and the infamy of treason. He claimed the pro- 
tection of the Government for East Tennessee. "If 
two-thirds have fallen off," he cried, " or have been sunk 
by an earthquake, it does not change our relation to this 
Government. If we had had ten thousand stand of arms 
and ammunition when the contest commenced, we should 
have asked no farther assistance." He believes in ulti- 
mate triumph. Even though he may not, always see his 
way clearly, yet, as in matters of religion, when facts 
give out, he draws upon his faith, "my faith is strong," 
he says, " based on the eternal principles of right, that a 
thing so monstrously wrong as this rebellion cannot 
triumph ; " and in this spirit he exclaims, " There will be 
an uprising. Do not talk about Republicans now ; do 
not talk about Democrats now ; do not talk about Whigs 
or Americans now ; talk about your country, and the 
Constitution, and the Union. Save that, preserve the 
integrity of the Government ; once more place it erect 
among the nations of the earth ; and then, if we want 
to divide about questions that may arise in our midst, 
we have a Government to divide in." 

In March, 1862, the President nominated and the 
Senate confirmed Senator Johnson asJ3ri gad ier General, 
and in the position of Military Governor, he at once 
proceeded to organize a provisional government for Ten- 
nessee. During the same month he addressed the people 



120 LIFE OF ANDEEW JOHNSON. 

of Nashville, delivering an eloquent and impressive dis- 
course on political affairs, dwelling mainly upon the 
Northern views of the war, its origin and purposes. He 
likewise directed a letter to the municipal officials of 
Nashville, requiring them to take the oath of allegiance. 
The Council refused, sixteen to one. The former declin- 
ing on the ground that it never was contemplated to 
take such an oath, and the latter saying he would 
take the oath and resign. Whereupon, Governor John- 
son issued a proclamation, declaring vacant the offices 
of Mayor and the City Council, who refused to take the 
oath of allegiance to the United States, and appointed 
other persons to serve pro tempore, until another election 
could be held. The Nashville Banner tells us of an en- 
tertaining little dialogue which took place about this 
time in the Governor's office, between Governor Johnson 
and two rebel ladies of thatcit}^, who visited the Gover 
nor to complain of the occupation of a residence belong- 
ing to the rebel husbaud of one of them by a United 
States officer. The conversation was substantially as 
follows : 

Lady. — I think it is too dreadful for a woman in my 
lonesome condition to have her property exposed to 
injury and destruction. 

Gov. — Well, madam, I will inquire into the matter, 
and if any injustice has been done, will try to have it 
corrected. But your husband, you admit, has gone off 
with the rebels, and you abandoned your dwelling. 

Lady. — My husband went off South because it was to 
his interest to do so. You must not find fault with any 
body for taking care of himself these times. You know, 
Governor, that all things are justifiable in war. 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 121 

Gov. — Well, madam, it appears to me that this broad 
rule of yours will justify taking possession of your 
house. According to your maxim, I don't see any 
reason for helping you out of your difficulty. 

Lady. — Oh ! but I didn't mean it that way. 

Gov. — No, madam, I suppose not. I will try to be 
more generous to you than your own rule would make 
me. I do not believe in your rule that "all things are 
justifiable in time of war." But that is just what you 
rebels insist upon. It is perfectly right and proper for 
you to violate the laws, to destroy this Government, but 
it is all wrong for us to execute the laws to maintain the 
Government." 

The rebel ladies looked around in various directions, 
and, heaving a long sigh, retired, with the conviction 
that they had suggested a knotty argument on a dan- 
gerous subject with a hard adversary. 

Governor Johnson's administration is characterized by 
the same rigid and fearless policy which has guided him 
through life. The annexed proclamation speaks for 
itself : 

PROCLAMATION OF GOV. JOHNSON. 

Executive Office, Nashville, Tenn.J 
May 9, 1862. \ 

Whereas, Certain persons, unfriendly and hostile to 
the Government of the United States, have banded 
themselves together, and are now going at large through 
many of the counties of this State, arresting, maltreat- 
ing, and plundering Union citizens wherever found : 

ISTow therefore, I, Andrew Johnson, Governor of the 
State of Tennessee, by virtue of the power and author- 
6 



122 • LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

ity in me vested, do .hereby proclaim that in every in- 
stance in which a Union man is arrested and maltreated 
by the marauding bands aforesaid, five or more rebels, 
from the most prominent in the immediate neighborhood, 
shall be arrested, imprisoned, and otherwise dealt with 
as the nature of the case may require ; and further, in 
all cases where the property of citizens loyal to the Gov- 
ernment of the United States is taken or destroyed, 
full and ample remuneration shall be made to them out 
of the property of such rebels in the vicinity as have 
sympathized with, and given aid, comfort, information or 
encouragement to the parties committing such depreda- 
tions. 

This order will be executed in letter and spirit. All 
citizens are hereby warned, under heavy penalties, from 
entertaining, receiving or encouraging such persons so 
banded together, or in any wise connected therewith. 

By the Governor : ANDREW JOHNSON. 

Edward H. East, 

Secretary of State. 

He carries out the principle upon which he hopes to 
succeed, irrespective of persons ; as was evidenced in the 
imprisonment at Nashville, in June, 1862, of five cler- 
gymen who refused to take allegiance. 

On December 8th Governor Johnson issued his proc- 
lamation, appointing and ordering elections to be held 
to fill vacancies in the Thirty-seventh Congress ; and on 
the 15th promulgated an order assessing certain indi- 
viduals in the City of Nashville, in various amounts, to 
be paid in five monthly installments, " in behalf of the 
many helpless widows, wives and children in the city 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 123 

of Nashville, who have been reduced to poverty and 
wretchedness in consequence of their husbands, sons 
and fathers having been forced into the armies of this 
unholy and nefarious rebellion." 

Among the necessary features of his rule is that an- 
nounced in Governor Johnson's proclamation of Febru- 
ary 20, 1863, warning all persons holding, renting, 
occupying or using any real or personal estate belong- 
ing to traitors or their agents ; not to pay the rents, 
issues or profits thereof, but to retain the same until 
some suitable person shall have been appointed in the 
name and in behalf of the United States, to receive it. 

It is not surprising to find, when one has read even 
this slight outline of the career of Andrew Johnson, 
that The National Union Convention, which met in 
Baltimore, June 6, 1861, to nominate candidates for 
the Presidency and Yice-Presidency of the United 
States, selected his name for the second office. Such a 
selection is the more proper when it was resolved to be- 
stow the Vice-Presidency upon some true and trusty 
Democrat, who had early and zealously identified him- 
self with the Union cause. 

When the result of the Baltimore Convention was 
known, a Union mass meeting was held at Nashville, 
where the presence of Governor Johnson was hailed 
with great acclamation. In his address on the occasion 
he accepted the nomination of the Convention, though 
he had not sought it, in these words: "Not a man in 
all the land can truthfully say that I have asked him 
to use his influence in my behalf in that body for the 
position allotted to me, or for any other. On the con- 
trary, I have avoided the candidacy. But while I have 



124 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

not sought it, still, being conferred upon me unsought, 
I appreciate it the more highly. Being conferred upon 
me without solicitation, I shall not decline it. [Ap- 
plause.] Come weal or woe, success or defeat, sink or 
swim, survive or perish, I accept the nomination, on 
principle, be the consequences what they may. I will 
do what I believe to be my duty." 

He spoke with his characteristic fearlessness on the 
principal topics of the day, and especially those identi- 
fied with the policy ratified by the re-nomination of 
President Lincoln. The nomination he thought equiv- 
alent to saying, not only to the United States, but to 
all the nations of the earth, that we were determined to 
maintain and carry out the principles of free govern- 
ment. The Convention had announced that the right 
of secession and the power of a State to place itself outside 
of the Union are not recognized. Tennessee had been 
in rebellion against the Government, and waged a trea- 
sonable war, just as other Southern States had done. 
She had seceded just as much as other States had, and 
left the Union as far as she had any power to do so. 
Nevertheless, the National Convention had declared 
that a State cannot put itself from under the national 
authority. It said by its first nomination, that the pres- 
ent President, take him altogether, was the man to 
steer the ship of State for the next four years. [Loud 
applause.] Next it said — if he might be permitted to 
speak of himself, not in the way of vanity, but to illus- 
trate a principle — " We will go into one of the rebellious 
States and choose a candidate for the Vice-Presidency." 
Thus, the Union party declared its belief that the rebel- 
lious States are still in the Union, and that their loyal 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 125 

citizens are still citizens of the United States. Our duty 
is to sustain the Government, and help it with all our 
might to crush out a rebellion which is in violation of 
all tbat is right and sacred. 

He held up the aristocracy of the slave States as 
having been their bane, nor did he believe the North 
wholly free from the curse of aristocracy. One of the 
chief elements, he believes, of this rebellion, was the op- 
position of the slave aristocracy to be ruled by men who 
have risen from the ranks of the people. And it just 
occurred to him that if it was so violently opposed to 
being governed by Mr. Lincoln, what in the name of 
conscience would it do with Lincoln and Johnson. 

Governor Johnson avowed himself as opposed, in 
the case of a Convention to restore his State, to permit 
those to participate in it who had given all their influ- 
ence and means to destroy it. They should undergo a 
purifying ordeal. The most honest and industrious 
foreigner, who sought America, had to dwell five years 
with us until he became a citizen. If we were so cau- 
tious about foreigners, who voluntarily renounce their 
homes to live with us, what should we say to the traitors, 
who, born and reared here, sought to destroy the Gov- 
ernment which always protected him. 

Upon the slavery and emancipation questions, Gov- 
ernor Johnson was not less direct or explicit. Here 
are his own words as reported : 

" And here let me say, that now is the time to recur to 
these fundamental principles, while the land is rent with 
anarchy, and upheaves with the throes of a mighty rev- 
olution. While society is in this disordered state, and 
we are seeking security, let us fix the foundations of 



126 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

the Government on principles of eternal justice, which 
will endure for all time. There is an element in our 
midst who are for perpetuating the institution of 
slavery. Let me say to you, Tennesseeans, and men 
from the Northern States, that slavery is dead. It was 
not murdered by me. I told you long ago what the 
result would be, if you endeavored to go out of the 
Union to save slavery, and that the result would be 
bloodshed, rapine, devastated fields, plundered villages 
and cities ; and therefore I urged you to remain in the 
Union. In trying to save slavery you killed it and lost 
your own freedom. Your slavery is dead, but I did 
not murder it. As Macbeth said to Banquo's bloody 
ghost : 

' Never shake thy gory locks at nie, 
Thou canst not say I did it.' 

" Slavery is dead, and you must pardon me if I do not 
mourn over its dead body ; you can bury it out of sight. 
In restoring the State, leave out that disturbing and 
dangerous element, and use only those parts of the ma- 
chinery which will move in harmony. 

" Now, in regard to emancipation, I want to say to the 
blacks that liberty means liberty to work and enjoy the 
fruits of your labor. Idleness is not freedom. I desire 
that all men shall have a fair start and an equal chance 
in the race of life, and let him succeed who has the most 
merit. This, I think, is a principle of Heaven. I am 
for emancipation for two reasons ; first, because it is 
right in itself; and second, because in the emancipation 
of the slaves, we break down an odious and dangerous 
aristocracy. I think that we are freeing more whites 
than blacks in Tennessee. I want to see slavery broken 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 127 

up, and when its barriers are thrown down, I want to 
see industrious, thrifty emigrants pouring in from all 
parts of the country." 

He declared for the Monroe doctrine, and avowed 
himself as a Democrat in the strictest meaning of the 
term. " I am (said he) for this Government because it 
is democratic — a Government of the people. I am for 
putting down this rebellion, because it is war against 
democracy. He who stands off stirring up discontent 
in this State and higgling about negroes, is practically 
in the rebel camp and encourages treason. He who, in 
Indiana or Ohio, makes war upon the Government out 
of regard to slavery, is just as bad. The salvation of 
the country is now the only business which concerns 
the patriot. 

" In conclusion, let us give our thanks, not formal but 
heartfelt thanks, to these gallant officers and soldiers, 
who have come to our rescue, and delivered us from 
the rebellion. And though money be expended, though 
life be lost, though farms and cities be desolated, let the 
war for the Union go on, and the " stars and stripes" be 
bathed, if need be, in a nation's blood, till law be re- 
stored and freedom firmly established." 

Governor Johnson retired amid loud and continued 
cheering. 

ACCEPTS THE NOMINATION OF THE VICE-PRESI- 
DENCY. 

Nashville, Term., Jmy 2, 1864. 
Hon. William Dennison, Chairman, and others, Committee of the 
National Union Convention : 
Gentlemen — Your communication of the 9 th ult., informing me 



128 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

of my nomination for the Vice-Presidency of the United States, 
by the National Convention held at Baltimore, and inclosing a copy 
of the resolutions adopted by that body, was not received until the 
25th ult. 

A reply on my part had been previously made to the action of 
the Convention in presenting my name, in a speech delivered in this 
city on the evening succeeding the day of the adjournment of the 
Convention, in which I indicated my acceptance of the distinguished 
honor conferred by that body, and denned the grounds upon which 
that acceptance was based, substantially saying what I now have 
to say. From the comments made upon that speech by the various 
presses of the country to which my attention has been directed, I 
considered it to be regarded as a full acceptance. 

In view, however, of the desire expressed in your communica- 
tion, I will more fully allude to a few points that have been hereto- 
fore presented. 

My opinions on the leading questions at present agitating and 
distracting the public mind, and especially in reference to the re- 
bellion now being waged against the Government and authority of 
the United States, I presume are generally understood. Before the 
Southern people assumed a belligerent attitude (and repeatedly 
since,) I took occasion most frankly to declare the views I then en- 
tertained in relation to the wicked purposes of the Southern poli- 
ticians. They have since undergone but little, if any, change. Time 
and subsequent events have rather confirmed than diminished my 
confidence in their correctness. 

At the beginning of this great struggle, I entertained the same 
opinion of it I do now, and in my place in the Senate I denounced 
it as treason, worthy the punishment of death, and warned the 
Government and people of the impending danger. But my voice 
was not heard or counsel heeded until it was too late to avert the 
storm. It still continued to gather over us without molestation 
from the authorities at Washington, until at length it broke with 
all its fury upon the country. And now, if we would save the 
Government from being overwhelmed by it, we must meet it in the 
true spirit of patriotism, and bring traitors to the punishment due 
their crime, and, by force of arms, crush out and subdue the last 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 129 

vestige of rebel authority in every State. I felt then as now, that 
the destruction of the Government was deliberately determined 
upon by wicked and designing conspirators, whose lives and for 
tunes were pledged to carry it out ; and that no compromise, short 
of an unconditional recognition of the independence of the South- 
ern States could have been, or could now be proposed, which they 
would accept. The clamor for " Southern Rights," as the rebel 
journals were pleased to designate their rallying cry, was not to 
secure their assumed rights in the Union and under the Constitu- 
tion, but to disrupt the Government and establish an independent 
organization, based upon Slavery, which they could at all times 
control. 

The separation of the Government has for years past been the 
cherished purpose of the Southern leaders. Baffled in 1832 by the 
stern, patriotic heroism of Andrew Jackson, they sullenly acquiesced, 
only to mature their diabolical schemes, and await the recurrence 
of a more favorable opportunity to execute them. Then the pre- 
text was the tariff, and Jackson, after foiling their schemes of nul- 
lification and disunion, with prophetic perspicacity, warned the 
country against the renewal of their efforts to dismember the Gov- 
ernment. 

In a letter, dated May 1, 1833, to the Rev. A. J. Crawford, after 
demonstrating the heartless insincerity of the Southern nullifiers, 
he said : " Therefore the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and 
a Southern Confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be 
the negro, or Slavery question." 

Time has fully verified this prediction, and we have now not 
only " the negro, or Slavery question," as the pretext, but the real 
cause of the rebellion, and both must go down together. It is 
vain to attempt to reconstruct the Union with the distracting ele- 
ment of Slavery in it. Experience has demonstrated its incom- 
patibility with free and republican governments, and it would be 
unwise and unjust longer to continue it as one of the institutions of 
the country. While it remained subordinate to the Constitution 
and laws of the United States, I yielded to it my support, but when 
it became rebellious and attempted to rise above the Government, 
and control its action, I threw my humble influence against it. 

6* 



130 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

The authority of the Government is supreme, and will admit of 
no rivalry. No institution can rise above it, whether it be Slavery 
or any other organized power. In our happy form of government 
all must be subordinate to the will of the people, when reflected 
through the Constitution and laws made pursuant thereto — State 
or Federal. This great principle lies at the foundation of every 
Government, and cannot be disregarded without the destruction of 
the Government itself. In the support and practice of correct 
principles we can never reach wrong results ; and by rigorously 
adhering to this great fundamental truth, the end will be the pre- 
servation of the Union, and the overthrow of an institution which 
has made war upon, and attempted the destruction of the Govern- 
ment itself. 

The mode by which this great change — the emancipation of the 
slave — can be effected, is properly found in the power to amend the 
Constitution of the United States. This plan is effectual and of no 
doubtful authority ; and while it does not contravene the timely 
exercise of the war power by the President in his Emancipation 
Proclamation, it comes stamped with the authority of the people 
themselves, acting in accordance with the written rule of the 
supreme law of the land, and must therefore give more general 
satisfaction and quietude to the distracted public mind. 

By recurring to the principles contained in the resolutions so 
unanimously adopted by the Convention, I find that they substan- 
tially accord with my public acts and opinions heretofore made 
known and expressed, and are therefore most cordially indorsed 
and approved, and the nomination, having been conferred without 
any solicitation on my part, is with the greater pleasure accepted. 

In accepting the nomination I might here close, but I cannot 
forego the opportunity of saying to my old friends of the Demo- 
cratic party proper, with whom I have so long and pleasantly been 
associated, that the hour has now come when that great party can 
justly vindicate its devotion to true Democratic policy and measures 
of expediency. The war is a war of great principles. It involves 
the supremacy and life of the Government itself. If the rebellion 
triumphs, free government — North and South — fails. If, on the 
other hand, the Government is successful — as I do not doubt — its 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 131 

destiny is fixed, its basis permanent and enduring, and its career of 
honor and glory just begun. In a great contest like this for the 
existence of free government the path of duty is patriotism and 
principle. Minor considerations and questions of administrative 
policy should give way to the higher duty of first preserving the 
Government ; and then there will be time enough to wrangle over 
the men and measures pertaining to its administration. 

This is not the hour for strife and division among ourselves. 
Such differences of opinion only encourage the enemy, prolong the 
war, and waste the country. Unity of action and concentration of 
power should be our watchword and rallying cry. This accom- 
plished, the time will rapidly approach when their armies in the 
field — that great power of the rebellion — will be broken and crushed 
by our gallant officers and brave soldiers, and ere long they will 
return to their homes and firesides to resume again the avocations 
of peace, with the proud consciousness that they have aided in the 
noble work of re-establishing upon a surer and more permanent 
basis the great temple of Amorican Freedom. 

I am, gentlemen, with sentiments of high regard, 
Yours truly, 

ANDREW JOHNSON. 



A late incident in which Governor Johnson figured 
may not be uninteresting as illustrative of the way in 
which, when forbearance is not a virtue, he " takes the 
responsibility." The Nashville Gazette tells us : 

" Just before dark, one evening, a drunken officer of an 
Ohio regiment, after insulting several gentlemen on Cedar 
street in the neighborhood of the capitol, stopped at the 
private residence of Governor Johnson, and demanded 
some whisky from a negro who was standing at the 
gate. The negro told him that he had nothing of the 
kind, v/hen the Lieutenant, in an enraged condition, drew 
a pistol and threatened to shoot him. The negro fled to 

> 



132 LIFE OF ANDKEW JOHNSON. 

the house, closely followed by the officer. Governor 
Johnson, hearing the disturbance, came out of the house 
and endeavored to appease the wrath of the Lieutenant, 
when he cocked his pistol and fired, the ball grazing the 
Governor's side and passing through his coat. At this 
stage of the affair the Governor concluded that pacifica- 
tion was entirely out of order, and throwing aside his 
dignatorial robes he advanced upon the Lieutenant, and 
as he should have done, knocked him down and pun- 
ished him severely. The Lieutenant was immediately 
afterwards arrested by Sergeant W. H. Colreth, Co. B, 
18th Michigan, and lodged in jail." 

In concluding this necessarily incomplete memoir of 
the distinguished Tennesseean, let us, to aid in giving a 
little color to the sketch, see what a friend, who served 
with him in the Legislature, messed with him, and knew 
him intimately, says: "Johnson is bold and indomita- 
ble. His distinguishing characteristic is energy. He 
tires at nothing; and if he cannot succeed one way he 
tries another, and another, until he accomplishes his 
purposes. He is rather slow and circumspect in taking 
his positions; but when taken nothing can drive him 
from them. . . . He seldom fights his battles 
through his friends, but relies mainly upon his own 
fearless energy to carry him through ; and it is never 
found wanting. As a citizen, he is a quiet, orderly, not 
to say diffident, gentleman. He is a warm friend and a 
bitter enemy. Emphatically of the people himself, he 
is the people's friend in public and private life. His 
best efforts, throughout his whole life, have been to ame- 
liorate their condition ; and every sympathy of his heart, 
I am certain, is with them." 



LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 133 

HORACE GREELEY'S REPLY TO REBEL AND COPPER- 

HEAD ATTACKS UPON PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S 

RE-NOMINATION. 

Abraham Lincoln, born fifty-five years ago of very poor parents, 
in slaveholding Kentucky, reared in a log cabin in the wilderness, 
which then all but covered Southern Indiana, losing his mother at 
ten years of age, and receiving very little education in the rude and 
scanty log schoolhouses of his boyhood's days, joined a volunteer 
militia company in the Black Hawk war of 1832, and was, at 
twenty-three years of age, elected its captain. He soon afterward 
studied surveying, and became proficient and useful therein, and at 
twenty-five years of age was chosen to the Legislature of Illinois 
from its metropolitan county, having once already been a candidate 
and received 277 of the 284 votes cast at the precinct where he re- 
sided and was thoroughly known. He now commenced the study 
of the law, and in 1837, when twenty-eight years old, was admitted 
to practice, and immediately taken into partnership by the Hon. 
John T. Stuart, who was very soon chosen to Congress from the 
district then composing the northern half of the State. (Mr. Stuart 
was then a Whig, but now represents the central district as a Dem- 
ocrat.) Mr. Stuart was even then a leading lawyer of Illinois, knew 
Lincoln thoroughly, having served with him in the Legislature and 
watched his legal studies, and was not the man to take a penniless 
dunce and ignoramus into partnership. 

Mr. Lincoln was twice re-elected to the Legislature, and was 
twice chosen to canvass the State as a "Whig Elector of President, 
when the "Whig party, though a numerical minority, was certainly 
nowise inferior to its antagonist in intellect or culture. Among its 
leading lawyers and active politicians were such men as Orville H. 
Browning, Jackson Grimshaw, Joseph Knox, John T. Stuart, John 
Y. Scammon, Edward D. Baker (one of the most effective public 
speakers of our age), John J. Hardin, Stephen T. Logan, etc., etc., 
when Abraham Lincoln was chosen by it to canvass the entire State 
as a Senatorial Elector in its desperate struggle to make Henry Clay 
President in 18-14. Is it possible that an ignorant boor and buffoon 



134 LIFE OF ANDKEW JOHNSON. 

should have been selected in preference to all these for that arduous 
and difficult labor ? 

In 1847 Mr. Lincoln was the Whig candidate for Congress in his 
District, and was elected by the largest majority it ever gave for any 
candidate or any party. Just look at the figures : 





WHIG. 




DEM. 




MAJ. 


1842, 


Governor, Duncan, 


6,057 


Ford, 


5,116 


941 


1844, 


President, Clay, 


6,732 


Polk, 


6,818 


914 


1846, 


Congress, Lincoln, 


6,340 


Cartwrig 


't,4,829 


1,511 


1848, 


Congress, Logan, 


7,095 


Harris, 


7,201 


106 


1848, 


President, Taylor, 


8,188 


Cass, 


6,687 


1,501 


1850, 


Congress, Yates, 


7,008 


Harris, 


6,254 


754 



[The Districts were re-cast before the election of 1852.] 

Here are six distinct contests in that District — all of which we 
can find any record — we believe all that ever occurred in it, and the 
highest majority it ever cast for any one was that given for Abraham 
Lincoln, though the vote was usually much higher, especially at a 
Presidential election. 

All this time Mr. Lincoln was struggling against the popular cur- 
rent in his State, as generally in the nation. When he first entered 
upon political life, Illinois was and ever had been strongly Demo- 
cratic and devoted to Gen. Jackson, yet he proclaimed himself a 
Whig and an intense admirer of Henry Clay. No one could have 
taken that side without expecting to be generally in a minority. Is 
that the course likely to commend itself to a vulgar boor and buf- 
foon, ambitious (as Mr. Lincoln clearly was) of political success and 
eminence ? 

In 1849 the Whig minority of the Legislature of Illinois cast their 
votes for Mr. Lincoln as United States Senator, while many able 
and honored champions of their faith would have been proud of the 
honor. 

In 1854 there was a breaking up of old parties. Many Democrats 
were shaken loose from their moorings by the passage of the Ne- 
braska bill. The Legislature of Illinois then chosen showed for the 
first time an opposition majority. A United States Senator was 
then to be elected in place of Gen. Shields, a Nebraska Democrat. 
Spontaneously and without hesitation, the great mass of the anti- 
Nebraska members designated Abraham Lincoln as their first choice 



LIFE OF A2TDEEW JOHNSON. 135 

for the proud position. On balloting, however, it was found that 
four or five anti-Nebraska Democrats would not vote for one whom 
they had hitherto opposed as a Whig. Thereupon, by Mr. Lin- 
coln's urgent advice, the nine-tenths dropped the man of their choice 
and went over to the one-tenth, electing Mr. Trumbull, an anti-Ne- 
braska Democrat. This was at once generous and wise. 

In 1856 the Republican National Convention met at Philadelphia 
and nominated John C. Fremont, of California, for President. 
Abraham Lincoln was then unanimously proposed for Vice-Presi- 
dent by the Republicans of Illinois, and received the votes of that 
and most other Northwestern States — 110 in all. But it was 
deemed indispensable that one of the candidates should be selected 
from the old or Eastern States, and so William L. Dayton, of New 
Jersey, was approved by a majority of the Convention. Mr. Lincoln 
gave an earnest and effective support to the ticket thus nominated. 

In 1S53 Mr. Douglas' first term drew to a close. The Legisla- 
ture then to be chosen must elect his successor. The Republican 
party had now become consolidated and homogeneous — in good 
part through, the magnanimity of Mr. Lincoln and his friends in 
1854-5. A State Convention assembled in the spring, and without 
one dissenting voice, nominated Mr. Lincoln as their candidate. 
They did this in full view of the fact that he must expect to meet 
and grapple with Stephen A. Douglas, one of the very best popular 
debaters of any age or country. If they had supposed they had a 
more deserving or better man for the work than Lincoln, they would 
doubtless have nominated that man. 

In the contest that followed it is well known that our sympathies 
were not on the side of Mr. Lincoln. That is to say, regarding men 
as of no account in comparison with ideas, we thought the Republi- 
cans of Illinois should have supported Mr. Douglas in acknowledg- 
ment of the great service he had just rendered to the cause of public 
liberty in defeating the Lecompton bill. We have never been driven 
from this position, though we can easily realize that the fierce an- 
tagonisms engendered by twenty years of fierce and often abusive 
party warfare could not readily be effaced. Suffice it that issue was 
joined, and the canvass between Messrs. Lincoln and Douglas that 
ensued was one of the ablest, the most lucid, the most instructive 
ever known. It was an honor to our country and to republican in- 
stitutions. We think Mr. Lincoln had much the stronger and 



136 LIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON. 

j lister position ; but on this point opinions will differ, while on that 
of the talent, felicity, ingenuity and general good temper evinced by 
either disputant, we see not how there can be two opinions. In the 
event, Mr. Douglas was re-elected, but Mr. Lincoln received the 
larger popular vote. And it was the very first instance of such a 
preponderance on that side in an Illinois canvass. 

In 1860 Mr. Lincoln was invited to speak for the Republican 
cause in the city of New York, and his speech was much the most 
cogent, felicitous, convincing defense of our main position ever ut- 
tered in Cooper Institute. Tens of thousands of it were circulated and 
admiringly read, and it doubtless powerfully conduced to his nomi- 
nation for President at Chicago some two months afterward — a 
nomination triumphantly ratified by the electoral vote. 





THE LIFE 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



By Hi.N T RY J. RAYMOND, 




Andrew Johnson, 



BY JOHN SAVAGE, 




$*fo fork: 
NATIONAL UNION EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, 

ASTOR HOUSE- 



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